Rafe

by Nelson Nye

  With the stiff-fingered hand Rafe set down his glass. "Not much point chasin' clean around the barn, eh?"

  The banker, showing his store teeth, sat back while Rafe fired up. Then he said, leaning forward, "This property I mentioned is being let go to hell. A man's entitled to protect his investment?"

  "No argument there. Your bank owns the property?"

  "Bank holds the mortgage. Last payment made—and it took care only of interest—was more than a year ago. These payments," Chilton explained, "are due quarterly. Our depositors have—"

  "I dunno," Rafe said. "If you're wantin' 'em foreclosed I'd say your best bet's the sheriff."

  Chilton snorted. "He won't even go near the place, and his deputy's more scairt of Spangler than he is. To make a long story short what we've got out there is a bunch of damn fools, a family of wastrels. The old man knows stock, and that's all you can say for them. Left alone I expect he could make a real go of it—that's why we loaned him the money. But—"

  "How much was that?"

  "Thirty thousand."

  Rafe whistled. "That spread must take up half the county."

  "Takes up enough. An old Spanish grant. First couple of years we didn't have no trouble. Then they took on this Spangler—"

  "Who's he?" Rafe cut in.

  "Foreman, range boss, whatever you want to call him. I won't try to fool you, he's a plenty rough customer. Old man's been failing—eyes ain't what they used to be. He's fell into the habit of letting Spangler pretty much run things. Spangler's stealing him blind."

  Rafe said, "Where do I come in?"

  "I don't say it'll be easy; you'll earn every nickel you're going to get out of this." Chilton said confidentially, "You'll be going out there as the bank's representative. You'll look into these losses, do whatever you think's called for."

  "Hmmm," Rafe said dubiously.

  "You'll draw two hundred a month, and a thousand dollar bonus if you wind this up to the bank's satisfaction. That's a lot of money, mister."

  It was a good deal more than Rafe had ever got hold of or ever expected to. "This Spangler," he said, "must be hell on wheels." He got up with a sigh.

  "Where you going?" Chilton growled.

  "Ain't much doubt where I'd go if I took on that chore."

  "You don't have to fire him, if that's what's bothering you. I'm not tying your hands. Work under cover, do it any way you want. There's a girl out there, old man's daughter, wild as a hare." Chilton smiled suggestively.

  "I guess not," Rafe said, turning to hide the black leap of his anger.

  "Where else can a secesh make that kind of money?"

  The banker had something there, but money wasn't everything. Rafe, arriving at the door, grabbed hold of the knob. Chilton said, "Figure you can afford to entertain such fine sentiments?"

  Rafe, chewing his lip, glared over a shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Got the price of that damage you inflicted across the street?"

  Rafe bristled. "An' if I haven't?"

  "Better think over my offer if you don't want to find yourself headed for Yuma."

  Rafe had heard enough about this Arizona country to understand there was mighty little hope for anyone sent there. The Territorial Prison was about all there was to Yuma, and a lot more went there than ever got out. He didn't doubt for an instant Chilton had enough influence to get him committed. Pike was on his mind, too.

  The banker showed his dentures. "When a man works for me I take care of him. Now what are you going to do?"

  "I don't see that I got much choice," Rafe said bitterly.

  IV

  The sun, dropping rapidly, was near submerged in reefs of copper cloud stretching mile on mile above the western rim of sight when Rafe, aboard the skewbald, some hours later moved out of a draw and began climbing east through a straggle of stunted juniper and pear. Six weeks grass was the color of straw and hardly came higher than the mare's shaggy pasterns. Directly ahead were the dark scarps of a peak that stood up butter-like straight as a rifle, fiercely red where the light broke across a patchwork of shadows going all the way from pale blue to black. Beyond, shoved up like slabs of gray slate, loomed the spires of the Cherrycows.

  Only the mare's shod hoofs and the occasional chirp of a startled bird broke the land's heavy silence that seemed laid up like stones. The brooding quiet held an eerie resentment Rafe could almost taste; and there was in him suddenly a feeling of doors being closed just ahead of him.

  A wild and lonesome country, hard to get into and probably harder to get out of if the folks who lived here took a dislike to him, which they very well might if the word got around he was repping for Chilton.

  More and more he was tempted to chuck it and run—but run where? And if he did get away what then of the quest that had hauled him half across a continent? Didn't he owe it to his folks to come up with them?

  Of course, he'd no real proof they'd ever been in this region. The Old Man never had cottoned to cattle; in a land big as this he'd surely go into horses, or hogs maybe. Or would stubbornness have kept him back of a plow?

  A lot of that stubbornness was in Rafe, too. He despised, after putting his shoulder to a wheel, to let it get away from him. Cross-grained as a mule, his old pappy had called him, and it was a heap kinder language than some of the descriptions other folks had flung after him.

  Rafe sighed. A powerful lot of water had gone rolling under the bridges since that day he'd quit the Ozarks to join up with the boys in gray. Been a mighty mort of changes.

  He guessed a man ought to look for the good in things. He reckoned he wouldn't of been so down on this chore if that banker hadn't told him a girl was tied into it. Danger was something you could learn to run elbows with; but if there was any one thing could really tear a man up it was a woman every time!

  He had generally figured to fight clear of them. The times he hadn't was sharp in his head as any memory he'd hung onto. And twice as loud. He could still see the wide-open eyes of that Pike filly peering blue as larkspur across the ugly look of that Greener. And here he was, crowding his luck like any half-baked Boston, a-humping and a-hustling to cram himself neck deep in a deal where Hoyle and logic went straight out the window and the rules, if any, was built to drag smiles from some addlebrained female!

  That was what Rafe thought.

  "I ought to be bored for the simples!" he snarled, and hauled up Bathsheba in a slash of wild cursing. Any guy not ready for a string of spools should be able to see what that banker was up to with a woman in the game and the stakes big as these was. All Chilton had to do was set back and wait till Rafe or some other mushhead like him got the skids knocked out from under that foreman. He wouldn't even have to shake the dang tree! Just flatter the girl or threaten foreclosure and the whole shebang would fall right in his lap!

  Rafe scowled something awful, thinking he ought to cut his string, too proud to whip out his knife to do it. He had a nagging hunch he was plumb on the threshold of times so parlous they could lose a man every tooth in his head, then beat him over the butt with a broomstick. Women and Yankees! Goddlemighty!

  Yet to run in blind panic wouldn't help a heap, either. Not knowing the country how far would he get up against guys like Pike and that conniving dang banker? Both of 'em pecking more pull, probably, than a twenty-mule borax team!

  Pride was fine, but it made a poor supper. Why, he didn't even know these crazy dang people! No skin off his nose if, after he got this Spangler off their backs, Chilton shoved 'em right out in the catclaw. Nobody'd appointed Rafe Bender their keeper!

  Though he'd never admit it, Rafe, deep down, was a pretty decent sort. He might stick up a stage when the going got rough, even whittle a steak off somebody's cow, but the kind of deal Alph Chilton was up to looked a pretty hard thing for a man to have to live with. Mighty near bad as skinning a orphan. About as low down as a feller could get.

  The whole thing gave him a kind of mental indigestion, fetching his convictions up s
o harsh against his needs. He didn't have to be told he was in a real bind, and he was no more anxious to get the dirt spaded over him than anybody else. A Johnny Reb could find himself powerful quick dead playing tick-tack-toe with these greedy Yank carpetbaggers.

  Rafe growled and swore and sighed again. Trying to be a Christian was sure as hell a full-time job! Everybody these days was looking out for Number One. If a gent wasn't able to blow his own nose he'd likely wait a long time for someone else to do it.

  He kneed Bathsheba up the trail. Juniper fled into scrub oak and piñon. Grass clumps began to show among the pear and Spanish bayonet and the land leveled off into rolling swells. Prairie chickens thrummed out of the thickets. A road-runner scuttled through the grain heavy stems of green-bladed feed and the mare came into a meadow that was just like something straight out of a dream.

  Despite Alph Chilton's detailed directions Rafe could hardly believe this oasis was real. Just like in McGuffy's Reader! Green stretching every place. The soft gurgle of water drew his glance to the creek and Bathsheba, impatient, broke through a trembling screen of willows and, wading into the flow, put her head down to drink.

  Rafe put together a smoke. Must be close onto forty acres, and alfalfa at that! Pulling the good smell of it deep inside him he dragged the quirly across his tongue, firing up. There hadn't been such a sight since old Jim Wolf lost his pants in a snowdrift.

  Off yonder the tops of a dozen great cottonwoods threshed in the breeze whipping down off the mountains. The whirling blades of a mill fetched his look to the flat roofs of buildings over beyond a far tangle of pens.

  He reckoned this layout was the sure-enough headquarters of the old Ortega grant—Gourd and Vine they was calling it now according to what Alph Chilton had told him. A hundred thousand unfenced acres. There had been more but a heap had gone into Ortega marryings and then, in bad times, considerable more had been sold. How this crop of gringos had got hold of it wasn't quite clear.

  In fact, now Rafe came to think back, there seemed quite a pile of things the banker hadn't gone into. The only name dropped into their talk had been that of Spangler, the bullypuss range boss Chilton claimed was stealing them blind. Nor had the banker explained how he came to have a lien.

  Increasingly uneasy, Rafe watched a rider quit the maze of pens and, circling the buildings, come on at a lope. Pitching aside the remains of his smoke Rafe eased Bathsheba up out of the creek. If that feller hadn't seen him before he certain sure did when Rafe came out of the trees.

  Rafe's eyes suddenly narrowed. This galoot coming toward him looked almighty like the slab-sided bustard who'd been leading that bunch Rafe had tried to flag down before he'd wound up in the hands of Grant's bone setter.

  The nearer he come the more like him he seemed. Rafe was pretty hard put to keep a rein on his temper. It didn't help none when this guy, even before he'd pulled up, yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doin'?"

  His voice was rough as the look on his face. He was big, heavy-set, with great slabs for hands. His chaps-covered legs appeared thick as fence posts. Menace and suspicion peered through slitted eyes as he set up his horse in a slather of grit. "When I ask a man somethin' he damn well better answer!"

  Rafe, with both hands over the knob of his saddle, said, "I'm huntin' a job—"

  "And I'm a Chinaman's uncle!"

  Rafe wasn't going to take issue on that, though he thought to himself the guy looked more like a chimp with his long fat nose and stringy mustache staggling over that steel-trap slit of a mouth. Even his ears stuck out like an ape's and his winkless, red-veined eyes were about as readable as rock. He was certainly a beauty.

  This guy said, like he was talking to a fool, "I guess you don't believe in signs. I guess you're one of them as has to be showed—"

  "What signs?" Rafe said, and Frozenface got right up in his stirrups like he was more than some minded to take bodily hold of him. Before he could do so another voice said, "What you got there, Jess?"

  Frozenface, never for an instant taking his look off Rafe, growled, "Another damn drifter! It's gettin' so a man can't put a foot out of doors without stumblin' over some goddamn saddle bum! I say it's time, by Gawd, we was stringin' up a few!"

  "You know the old man wouldn't hold still for that—"

  "Who's to tell? A guy with a choke strap round his neck ain't—"

  "We don't have to do that. Take his stuff, put him afoot and haze him off into the dunes like you done the rest of them," the newcomer said; and something about the sound, some inflection of his voice, pulled Rafe's face about.

  His jaw fell open. "Duck!" he cried with his eyes lighting up, and would have sent Bathsheba straightaway over except that, before he could do it, a gun snout jabbed hard against his ribs. A gate-hinge growl advised, "Set right still if you don't want them guts blowed hell west an' crooked!"

  In the whirl and churn of Rafe's confused thoughts there was just enough savvy to understand he was about as close to planting as a man could come and still keep breathing. This dark faced Jess, if that order were ignored, wouldn't hesitate a minute. It was more reflex, however, than any conscious intention that caused Rafe's legs to lock the mare in her tracks. His glance stayed riveted on the handsome dandy in the bottle-green coat, stock and tall beaver hat who, in white cheeked dismay, stared incredulously back.

  Chagrin—almost a sickness—peered out of that weasel-like handsome face. Consternation crept into the bloodless look of it, and a wildness sprang into the fright-widened eyes as Rafe said, "Hell, don't you know your own brother?"

  The man glared back, rebelliously shaking his head. He licked his lips and tried to pull himself together. "I have no brother."

  "Mean to say you ain't Duke Bender?"

  An ugly red flamed up through the other's face. His cheeks became mottled and he said, thick with fury, "I'm Bender, all right—"

  "You never had no brother Rafe?"

  The man said harshly, "He was killed in the war."

  Rafe just looked at him. Slowly his lip curled, seeing the hate and shame in that face, the trembling fright. "By God, you'd like to believe that, wouldn't you!"

  Bender bristled. "I don't know what your game is, feller, but you sure as hell ain't no brother of mine. Rafe was killed in the war. We got a paper to prove it!"

  V

  Rafe sat there numbly trying to figure this out. They maybe did have a paper; it wouldn't be the first time mistakes of that nature had been made during the confusions of fighting a war. But the scared incredulity of Duke's first look was still bright in front of him, making a mockery of all that had been said. Duke recognized him sure as hell; and there was one more thing you couldn't hardly get around: his brother didn't want Rafe climbing out of no grave to stand between him and what he figured he had coming when the Old Man went.

  It made Rafe pretty sick. Back on the farm he'd found excuses for the boy, ways of glossing over, covering up the things he'd done, knowing Duke wasn't bad, only thinner-skinned than most, too quick to lay hold of notions that pleased him, a sight too gullible, too easy steered.

  He'd always been one to find the shortest way out when things began to bog up. Aside from his folks nobody ever, back home, had called him anything but "Duck"—which had sure used to make Rafe Bender boil.

  He sighed, thinking back, seeing how they had spoiled him, never making the boy face up to his problems. Now the boy was a man, still hugging kids' notions, still bound and determined every guy and his uncle was out of step but him. It made a pretty ugly picture.

  "Well..." Spangler said when nobody else seemed minded to speak, "I reckon that settles that." He flashed Rafe a hard grin. "You heard him. Git down."

  Rafe looked at his brother. "We'll hear what Maw has to say on the subject."

  He'd been prepared for Duke's sneer but not for the venom, the cold slashing scorn that came out of Duke's voice like a whip when he said, "If you was Rafe you'd of damn well knowed better'n that!"

  "Maw..." Drea
d climbed into Rafe's throat. "You—you means Maw's—" He couldn't bring the word out.

  "Rafe," Duke said, like it was purest gospel, "put the coffin together and help me bury her!"

  Rafe's jaw fell open. He sat there too shocked, too bewildered by so bald-faced a lie, to do more than goggle. And he was still hard at it when Duke in a kind of choked voice snarled, "Get rid of him!" and, whirling his mount, spurred off like he couldn't get out of sight quick enough.

  "All right, you," Spangler said, crowding his horse up against Bathsheba. "You comin' outa that saddle or hev I—"

  Rafe, mild as milk and with his mind, by the look, caught up in some backwash of painful memories, pushed out his crippled paw in a kind of feeble protest. Being Rafe's right hand it naturally drew Spangler's notice, his sharpened interest showing in the relaxing of his muscles as his stare took in the uselessness of stiffened clawlike fingers.