Rafe

by Nelson Nye

  Rafe didn't like Pike's stare. It put him in mind of the way the girl had looked when he had told her his name, when he'd been answering all them questions. It came over him now she'd hooked him up straightaway with the horse spread out at the Ortega place; and he wondered if Chilton had made this connection—if, indeed, it hadn't been the basis of his interest, of that job he'd dug straight out of the barrel.

  He demanded, glowering, "Who else knows about it?"

  Pike fished a bottle out of his pocket. When Rafe testily looked his disgust and contempt, Bunny's father, shrugging, put about ten swallows hurriedly down his own hatch. Smacking his lips with a satisfied sigh the old gaffer said, "Whole town, probably. But I will tell you this—they never got it from us. The relationship between a patient and his doctor—wild horses couldn't have dragged it out of us! And," he declared, leaning precariously nearer, "I don't believe Chilton knew about it when he hired you."

  Though Rafe couldn't follow the convolutions of Pike's reasoning, and didn't for a moment put any stock in his protestations, the Doc's final statement rang a bell deep inside him.

  "How do you figure that?" he said.

  "He's up to his ears in that place, been itching to take it over," Pike urged, "ever since he fixed up those papers for Bender. Spangler's the only thing that's stood in his way. You think he'd have steered you into the deal if he'd had any notion your name was the same?"

  "Maybe not," Rafe growled, "but if Spangler is takin' all the profits outa the spread I can't see how he's hurtin' Chilton any. I would say he's playin' right into Chilton's—"

  "That's because," Pike said darkly, "you don't—" and chopped off his talk as Bunny came wide-eyed into the room.

  "Oh!" she cried, suddenly smiling, "you've got the bandages off. I'm so glad!" She looked at her father. "He'll be all right now, won't he? He'll be able to use them?"

  Pike with his mouth puckered up looked undecided. He finally said, "I don't really know. If he keeps working them, puts in the time and the patience it will take, I'd say that right hand will maybe come out pretty good; but the left—They didn't leave much to work with. He'll get some use out of those fingers, but the first and third—I really ought to open."

  "Not on your tintype!" Rafe snarled, glowering, and lividly thrust both hands behind him.

  Bunny looked shocked. Almost reproachfully, she said, "If Daddy thinks—"

  "By grannies," Rafe shouted, backing hastily away, "I don't care what he thinks! They're my hands, dammit! And they've had all the monkeyin' I'm goin' to stand for, you hear?" he yelled, bowing up like a cornered cat.

  Bunny, appearing dismayed and bewildered, said, "But Daddy—"

  "Never mind! I'll make out, don't you worry! Send me your bill. I'll pay it when I can, but don't either one of you come any nearer. I'm gittin' outa here an' nobody, believe me, better get in my way!"

  "But you can't!" Bunny wailed. "Don't you know that's what they want?" She whipped around. "Daddy, tell him!"

  Pike, sighing mightily, steepled his fingers. "I'm afraid your life wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel if they were to catch you out of this house right now."

  Rafe, bristling with distrust, was half convinced in spite of himself. "'They'? What 'they'? You talkin' about that squirrel-faced banker an' his bought-an-paid-for sheriff?'"

  Pike's eyes kind of goggled. His jaw flopped down like a blacksmith's apron. "Great Scott!" he exclaimed, sounding pretty upset. Peering nervously around, and with all his chins quivering, he cautiously lowered his elephant-like behind. With a considerable expulsion of grunts and wheezes he eventually got it settled in the chair. "Young man," he said, "the subject of your remarks is not one to be taken lightly." His simmering stare swiveled around to his daughter. "Show him, Bunny."

  "Come along," she bade with her own glance averted, and Rafe followed her out into a room that faced the street. He trailed her over to the window. Being careful not to disturb the curtain she said, "Take a look at that."

  Straight off Rafe didn't see a thing but the scenery. Then the wink of metal drew his narrowing stare to a scrub oak thicket a couple of hundred feet away. Barely discernible through the foliage was the shape of a squatting man.

  Bunny touched his arm and they returned to the bedroom where she stopped beside her father. Following her eyes Rafe went again to look out. Another man was waiting in the rocks beyond the shed from which, the first time he'd quit this place, he'd got Bathsheba. "Well?" he said, staring hard at Pike. "What's about it?"

  "If this were Chilton's doing," Bunny's father said, "they'd not need to be under cover."

  But Rafe wasn't ready to holler calf rope yet. "Maybe," he said, "his tin-badge" had other fish to fry."

  "You can't have it both ways," Bunny exclaimed indignantly. "If the sheriff was hand-in-glove with Mr. Chilton, and it was Mr. Chilton's intention to put you out of business, you'd be in jail right now. To be made a public example of!"

  "Maybe it didn't suit—"

  "Boy," Pike said, "I've heard enough of that nonsense. The facts speak for themselves. That pair you've just looked at are a couple of Spangler hardcases, and they're obviously out there to make sure you stay put."

  Not even Rafe's hardshell prejudice could stand up against that. But he wasn't about to step down without a struggle. "Then why don't this wonderful Dry Bottom badge-toter make 'em clear out or shove 'em in the clink?"

  Bunny, looking flustered, clouded up to say resentfully, "Nobody with a lick of sense would go out of his way to tangle with Spangler."

  "Well, isn't that just fine!" Rafe scowled. "What's a feller have to do to get protection around here?"

  "Mostly, around here," Pike said, staring back at him, "a crock is expected to stand on its own bottom."

  VIII

  Say what you will, that following week was the longest Rafe Bender had ever put in at anything. Whenever he looked Spangler's gunnies was out there. Maybe not the same pair all this miserable while, but there wasn't an hour there wasn't somebody at it, watching and waiting like a couple of damned toads. More than once he was almost tempted to step out, so fierce was the pressure, so frustrating the fury being piled up inside him.

  He became hard to live with as Bunny had frankly said one day. But he was not too filled with his persecutions to forget the exercises Pike had prescribed. Hour after hour he worked his fingers, kneeding them, stretching them, flexing and bending them while the hate coursed through him like a heavy tide. He could feed himself now, could dress and shave himself too, do pretty near anything else but get out of there.

  One thing he had made up his mind about: hereafter he was going to look out for himself, and the devil take the rest of them. There was no good trying to be a turn-your-cheek Christian in a land overrun by throat-slitting Philistines. From here on out he would be playing for Rafe Bender!

  He could put together a smoke with his hands now, but the left, as Pike feared, healed up considerable short of maximum efficiency. Oh, it would pick up things and, after a fashion, manage to keep hold of them, but those first and third fingers didn't close the way they ought to. They tracked; that was about all you could say for them. He'd had to learn all over again to work at old skills that right hand had forgotten. Lifting and squeezing he kept both of them busy while he built back his strength and nursed his black fury.

  Saturday the sheriff came, a washed-out, handle-barred, frame-shrunk old has-been whose rheumy eyes appeared frequently to seek, but never quite meet the pair staring back at him. Dropping his hat on the floor he took the proffered chair, heeled it back against the wall and said, "You've had a time, I guess."

  Rafe considered that self-evident. Pike wasn't home and Bunny, after introducing the badge-toter as Ed Sparks, had gone back to the kitchen, leaving them alone.

  "Mebbe," Sparks said now, "you better tell me about it."

  "What's there to tell? Somebody beat the livin' daylights out of me, packed me off and left me out in them dunes to get blowed over with sand an' b
uried."

  "You don't know that, do you? I understood, when the coroner found you, you was ravin' like a loony, plumb out of your head."

  "What's that got to do with the price of apples?"

  "How would you know, then, how you got out there?"

  "If I'd set out by shank's mare I would know it!"

  The sheriff stared at Rafe's run-over boots and shifted his chaw to the other side of his face. "You say somebody beat you. Care to put a name to him?"

  "I don't know who it was."

  "Ain't that a mite strange? I think if somebody'd handled me the way you been—"

  "I was talkin'," Rafe growled, "when somebody bent a gun over my noggin. I didn't see him—Hell, you don't think I'm nump enough to take that deliberate!"

  "Well ... where was this? Who was you talkin' to?"

  "I ain't askin' your help."

  "I'll thank you to recollect I'm sheriff of these parts. I've got a right to expect you to answer my questions, boy."

  "Go right ahead an' expect if you want to."

  Sparks' cheeks flushed a little, but his eyes juned away. "Understand you fought for the Rebs durin' the war." He stopped to let Rafe consider the fact. "A man gets farther an' a whole heap faster—"

  "If you got a point, make it."

  "I want to know where that gun was bent over your head. I want to know who done it an' who you was talkin' to." He said, suddenly scowling, "I want to know all about it."

  Rafe grinned.

  "All right," Sparks spat, "be a pig-headed fool, but don't come cryin' to me if you're killed!" He scooped up his hat and got onto his feet. "I don't want no trouble breakin' out account of you."

  "A man's got a right to defend—"

  "A Rebel's got no rights at all around here. If your health's become a problem I suggest you take it to where the climate's more salubrious. You understand that?"

  Rafe bristled up, eyes bright as bottle glass. "Don't bang your threats against me, you dang boot licker!" Looking about to throw a fit he started for the man. Sparks scrinched away. Squirming along the wall the sheriff made it to the door and scuttled off down the hall like he had ants in his pants.

  Rafe, glowering after him, slammed the door so violently that, off out of sight, something fell with a clatter. Still muttering, fierce scowling, he threw open the window to blow the place out.

  But there wasn't so much as a breath of air stirring. All the open window did was let in more heat and with a snarl of disgust Rafe picked up his shell belt and buckled it around him, looking sure enough about as rile as a man could get.

  He wished now he'd asked what Sparks proposed to do about the pair outside that was keeping him bottled up in this place—not that he was like to have done anything anyway. At least it would have given Rafe a chance to work off some of his spleen. Still thinking about it, he hauled open the door and went prowling for Bunny.

  She was still in the kitchen, flour on her arms and dough on the bread board. She looked around with a smile that tried hard to stay as she took in, sobering, the signs of Rafe's mood. She said, "It won't be forever, if that's any consolation. Why don't you go sit on the porch and cool off?"

  He said, in self-pity, "You tryin' to get me a harp?"

  "I don't think those fellows will do anything so long as they believe you're not trying to duck out."

  "Well, thanks," Rafe said thinly. "Sure pleasures my thinkin' a heap to hear that!"

  She made a little face. Then she sighed, prodding her dough. "Most of the boys I knew back home, if they'd been cooped up like this with a girl, would have better things to do with their time than moping around, fretting and stewing, the way you've been ever since you've been up."

  Rafe, stopped short, went still as a fence post, looking at her as though she'd sprouted two heads.

  "They'd know a girl likes to be noticed. Probably most of them," she said, going on with her work, would have first of all figured on improving their acquaintance?"

  Rafe's mouth dropped open. His cheeks fired up. His eyes bugged out like two knobs on a stick.

  She slanched him a look as she was rolling out her dough. "I guess those tales I've heard of Southem gallantry—"

  Rafe, anyway, had heard more than enough. He got out of that kitchen like the heel flies was after him.

  "Lordy!" he breathed, propping a chair against his door, eyes big as slop buckets. He dragged a sleeve across his face, sagged into the chair, looking about as limp as a bundle of dish rags. Talk about your Delilahs! He'd encountered some pretty designing females in some of the places he'd been since the War but never, by grab, any girl bold as her!

  He got onto his feet with his clothes sticking to him, too upset to think straight, too indignant to sit still; and yet, someway, filled with a strange and delicious excitement. He realized this was her wiles tightening round him. There was no defense against a scheming woman—or, he thought, suddenly colder than frog legs, a woman scorned! And it was no danged help for him to stand here shaking. He'd better dig for the tules—andale pronto!

  This was the straw he fastened to in his perturbation, completely forgetting the gunhawks outside. He found his hat and chin-strapped it to him, was taking a last nervous look around when remembrance of Spangler's henchmen hit, pretty near taking the legs out from under him. With both fists gripped to the sash he stopped.

  "Lord God a'mighty!" he gasped, backing off. He saw his goggling stare dreadfully reflected in the wavery hand-rolled lights of the window. He gulped for wind, swallowing like he'd got a bone in his throat, shuddery sort of, all his thoughts upside down.

  He made a real effort to pull himself together, desperately trying to drive back the unnerving vision of Spangler's hardfaced pistoleros. If they were still out there, and their job was to get him, you could dang well bet they'd make their try—but you couldn't tell what a fool female might do—probably whatever popped into her head; and just the bare thought was more than Rafe could put up with. He grabbed a quick breath and made a dash for the door.

  And the worst of it was he might have got clean away with it. But just as his best hand went out to yank it open, Bunny's voice called. Letting go of the knob Rafe jerked half around, flopping like a fish with a hook through its gills.

  She was in the kitchen doorway with her blue rounded eyes looking big almost as teacups. One flour-daubed hand was against her throat and Rafe, for the life of him, couldn't say a thing. Filled with guilt and consternation he reckoned she'd seen right enough what he was up to. It gave him a turn the way she looked, so forlorn and defeated, so someway wistful.

  "Rafe!"

  You'd of swore her cry came straight from the heart. A man just plain couldn't help being affected; Rafe stood with bowed shoulders, itchy with embarrassment, feeling—dad drat it—like a damn caught Judas!

  By girding himself, looking off past her, he could ignore the unexpected brimming of tears, but he had no shield against the words that came tumbling so pitifully out of her. "You," she gulped, "were figuring to go without ever a word?"

  He stared at the floor, trying to shut out the sound, seeming about as low down as a growed man could get. She honestly had him, coming and going; but, woman fashion, couldn't leave it there. She had to rub his nose in it.

  "After all we've been to each other." She sighed. "Oh, Rafe—how could you!"

  Since they hadn't been anything at all to each other, this struck a jarring off-key chord in a man who, though groggy, was still on his feet. It was just like pumping new blood through his veins. Time she came, groping, arms out and reaching toward him, Rafe had got off the hook and was going through the door.

  IX

  The man out front must have been plumb asleep. Rafe, hunting Bathsheba, got clean around the house and halfway to the shed before he got loose enough of the spell she'd put on him to remember Spangler's gunnies. With a startled yelp he plunged against the door, only to find it re-enforced with a padlock!

  Rafe didn't waste any time shouting curses. He dr
agged out his pistol and banged the butt against the thing, again and again until the lock flopped open.

  Bathsheba, pawing, bobbed her head and whinnied. Rafe found the blanket and got his saddle on her. The bridle and bit he had missed before were hung with his spurs from a peg on the wall and, though he shivered with impatience, he got them too, dug his boot in the stirrup and went on up.

  The mare danced with excitement as he kneed her around. Rafe, truth to tell, was pretty excited himself, expecting, any moment to hear the yells go up. Quick as he got her facing the door he brought the reins down hard. She went through like a thrown rock, grunting and squealing, breaking wind at every jump.

  He heard the first shot whimper cousin, slicing the air about an inch from his jaw. But he held his fire, scrinching flat out along the mare's extended neck, not daring now to swerve her; and this way, her shod hoofs pounding up a storm, they sailed into the open, straight as an arrow for the front of Pike's house.