Webster watched the red waters of the angry river for a long while, fascinated as he always was by the energy and power and ceaseless work of nature, and he came to the conclusion that it would be a week at the very least before the water went down and wagons could ford the stream at this point. Even now, had the river been down, the wagons could not have dug through the deep soft red mud of the trails leading to the crossing.
Jim would have to be around town for several days yet, plenty of time to sprout the seeds he had planted in his fight with Ike Flint. He turned and rode back through the mud, stabling his horse at the livery.
“I’ll take both ends of him,” he told Barney. “Give him some oats, so there won’t be too big a gap between ends.”
He paid Barney for the horse and had started out when Barney called him back. “Oh, yeah. Just happened to think. Faulkner wants to see you.”
“Who’s he?”
“Star Trading Company. An upstanding man who would be an inspiration to any young squirt who wanted to live right. Don’t smoke, chew, cuss—”
“I remember now,” Webster answered, “nor spend his money needlessly on chewing gum and popcorn.”
“That’s the huckleberry. Well, keep your nose clean and call him Mister, and maybe he’ll give you a job sweeping floors, and then pretty soon, maybe in forty or fifty years, you can by dint of hard work find yourself rich some day. Provided you’ve got any rich uncles that might leave you the money. You sure won’t get it out of him.”
Webster walked on through the main street and found the Star Trading Company’s big pine warehouse at the far end of the road. Going along, he noted how crowded the street was, now that there was no more rain. Men were moving, congregating in knots and talking, squatting in front of store fronts, waiting for the river to recede. In a vacant space beside the general store half a dozen campers had fires going around their covered wagons, cooking their supper. The place was crowded with men and busy women and romping children—all waiting to head into the unknown and dangerous Territory, hoping against hope that they would live to find a piece of ground to call their own and to settle down into building a home.
The Star Trading Company was a pine building sixty or seventy feet across the front and at least a hundred and fifty feet long. A loading dock ran along one side of it, the height of a wagon bed, and on the dock at intervals were stacks of barbed wire, plow parts painted red, green and yellow, blocks of stock salt, wagon axles and wheels, and other hard goods of use to farmers and ranchers.
A couple of wagons were backed up to the dock and a couple of knots of ranchers and farmers squatted in tight circles on the dock and talked and smoked. A good substantial setup for a new country, and in a good location, here at one of the gateways to the Territory.
Webster walked inside and found more trade goods in a well-stocked general hardware store. An elderly, colorless clerk caught up with him and asked him his needs.
“Faulkner was asking for me.”
“What name?”
“I didn’t give any, and he didn’t ask for me by name, so far as I know. But you can tell him my name is Webster.”
“Wait here,” the clerk said. “I’ll see if he’s busy.”
The clerk knocked timidly on a door at the rear corner of the store, and at a call went in. He came out a moment later and said, “All right. Mr. Faulkner can see you now. Just go in.”
Webster was perhaps fifty feet from the office door, and as he started toward it, a young man came out and closed the door behind him. Webster saw only that he was young and fair complected, and neatly gotten up in range clothes.
The young man had hardly taken a half dozen steps when a voice came through the door. “Oh, Emory, wait a minute. One more thing.”
The young man turned and went into the office again, closing the door behind him.
Webster stopped to wait for them to finish their business, and then the idea that had been trying to come to the surface of his mind broke free. “Emory.” That was the name of the Swanson girl’s friend, the young cattle buyer.
Webster said casually to the clerk, who had gone behind the counter and started arranging a group of horseshoe kegs. “That’s young Dustin, isn’t it?”
The clerk nodded. “Yes. Fine young man. He’s a comer.”
“Looks it,” Webster answered idly.
Then Dustin came out and was swallowed up in the piles of merchandise, while Webster went on into Faulkner’s office.
* * * *
When J.B. Faulkner was forty years old, he was the cashier of a bank in south Texas. He had always been a silent, taciturn man who kept his thoughts to himself. He had a good business head, and he had found no trouble in saying no to one who needed money, no matter how badly it would have hurt a more humane man to have to turn him down. Thus it was that for a while he had been a good bank cashier, so far as the bank was concerned.
Two years later it was discovered that the bank had been looted clear. Faulkner was arrested. The accountants had found a shortage of over forty thousand dollars, enough to break the bank. But they could not find out what Faulkner had done with the money. In his silent way, he had persisted in denying any knowledge of the shortage, and that was all they had ever got out of him.
The bank was broke, and many of its depositors were in actual want because of it, none of which concerned Faulkner. He stood before the judge at the end of the trial and heard him discourse upon the perfidy of a man who would rob his friends and neighbors. The judge called him the blackest scoundrel who had ever stood before his bar. He sentenced J.B. Faulkner to twenty years at hard labor, and regretted that he could not send him to prison for life.
Faulkner heard this, and the eyes in his expressionless face showed not one ray of regret or shame. They were as lifeless as the eyes in the head of a marble statue.
Four years later Faulkner walked out of prison a free man. It had been a simple matter for him; he had merely got in touch with the campaign manager of the man then running for governor. He had had dealings with that man, and he knew all about him. So it was that Faulkner, a prisoner of the state, sent a check for five thousand dollars to the governor’s campaign manager—as a campaign contribution.
A few months later, when the new governor had appointed a new pardon and parole board, Faulkner was set free. His petition said that it was possible that he had not been as diligent in protecting the bank’s funds as he should have been, but that it was an error of omission and not a criminal act. And further, the petition prayed, Faulkner was a sick man, being a victim of tuberculosis, and that he wanted to get out and die a free man rather than as a felon. It was all very touching for, after all, Faulkner was not a common cattle thief or highwayman, but just a respectable man who had somehow unknowingly let money get away from him which he was supposed to be protecting.
Then when he was free, Faulkner had got hold of certain moneys he had deposited here and there in various banks under different names, and had come up to the Red River country and had gone into business. Adding up the five years he spent in jail and prison, forty thousand dollars was not bad pay.
Now J.B. Faulkner was fifty-five years old. His chest was still narrow and in damp weather his bronchial cough persisted. He did not drink because liquor made him sick at his stomach, and he did not smoke because smoke was too strong for his bronchial tubes. He did not gamble because he did not like the risk of parting with a dollar on the turn of a card. And he did not curse because he was so secretive that he could not bear to have anybody know what was going on in his mind.
He now sat behind a littered old pine table which served him as a desk, while his long bony fingers toyed with a writing pen, and while his eyes were studying Webster, who had come in and now stood before him.
Webster returned his gaze, looking at a lean old man who would have been big if there had been any meat on his tall frame. The ma
n was concave, his shoulders stooped forward and his chest was hollow. In his wrinkled gray cotton suit he reminded Webster of a dried and curled-up leaf. The bones of his head were without flesh, giving him a cadaverous appearance, and looking at the sunken, bleak eyes, Webster thought of a long-dead fish. The eyes told nothing; they were curtains behind which the man hid his thoughts.
Webster tired of waiting for an invitation to sit down and found himself a chair, while Faulkner continued to study him. Finally Faulkner gave out a few words from between his tight lips.
“You’re the man who started the fight with Ike Flint last night.” It was a statement, indicating that Faulkner had not satisfied himself about that fight.
“Yes. Flint and I tangled,” Webster admitted.
“Why?”
“I don’t happen to like a man who shoots off his mouth too much.”
Faulkner shook his head, from side to side. “No. That’s not the answer. Try again.”
“That’s what I told him, and he didn’t like it.”
“That’s not enough reason.”
“Then why did I do it?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“What do you want to know for? And why should I tell you even if you had the right to know.”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out. You see, Flint works for me. He is a valuable man, and I don’t like to have fellows going around beating up my men. We have troubles enough without riffraff making trouble for them.”
“Are you trying to tell me that you have trouble keeping men from beating Ike Flint up?”
“I didn’t say that. Nobody can beat Ike Flint up. That is, nobody could until you came along.”
“You’re trying to tell me that Ike Flint could take care of himself until I proved that he couldn’t.”
“You’re the only man that he couldn’t handle.”
“And for that reason,” Webster said, “You need him in your business, and you don’t like the idea of me having bested him. Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“That’s the sense of it,” Faulkner admitted. “Why did you do it?”
“It strikes me that you ought to be able to see the answer to your own question. You’ve just stated the situation. You need a man who can take care of himself. That man was Flint until I came along. I need a good connection, and so naturally I have to demonstrate that I’m a better man for Flint’s job than Flint is. That’s simple enough to understand, don’t you think?”
Whatever Faulkner thought, it did not show in his eyes as he remained silent for a long moment. Finally he said, “What makes you think that I would give you his job? What good would a beat-up man like you do me?”
“I can do you more good than Flint can, because I am a better man than he is. That is what I set out to prove, and you must have some such idea or you wouldn’t have sent for me.”
Faulkner’s face remained bleak. “That seems a somewhat indirect way to go about asking for work.”
“I wasn’t asking for work. I was just demonstrating what I could do. You saw it and sent for me to offer me work. That’s a fact, is it not?”
“You also jump at conclusions,” Faulkner stated.
“I don’t think I had to jump very far. But if I jumped in the wrong direction, then forget it. I’ll be getting on.”
“You do have one failing,” Faulkner said thoughtfully. “You try to push yourself too hard and too fast. A man can fall on his face that way.”
“I’ve been doing pretty risky work for a long time, and I haven’t fallen on my face but once. Of course, that was a pretty costly fall, but it won’t happen again.”
“And what was that fall?”
“That fall was my private business. And I won’t be falling again. Now what was it you had in mind?”
“I haven’t said I had anything in mind.”
Webster got to his feet. “All right. My mistake. I thought you could use a good man.”
“Sit down,” Faulkner said without excitement. “You’ve got to learn to wear a tighter bit. You’ve got qualities, but you’ve got faults. Now, what kind of work are you used to doing?”
“Anything. I’ve done a bit of this and that. Bossed a wagon train, bossed cattle drives, bossed sawmills, bossed this and that—”
“You seem to have had a lot of experience bossing things. What kind of money are you looking for?”
“I don’t work for board, washing and horse feed. I hire to do work that other men can’t do, and I have to have money that other men can’t earn.”
“How far have you gone to get that kind of money?”
Webster pulled down his shirt collar. “You don’t see any rope burns around my neck, do you? Well, you won’t. Otherwise, I’m a man that likes to have a couple of dollars to rattle together in his pocket.”
“Do you think you can take Flint’s next load up into the Territory, and get there with it?”
Webster looked out the window. “I see some hills over there across the river. They’re green, and they’ve got a trail through them. I take it. I’ve been through green hills before, and I’ve usually come out on the other side. I don’t see why I can’t do the same thing about those hills.”
“You see some hills and they are green,” Faulkner said. “That green is trees. You don’t see what is under the trees.”
“Anything different from what’s under the trees on other hills?”
“Something considerably different. There’s a trail that runs through those hills, but there are eyes among those trees, and back of the eyes there are men with guns. And those men with guns want what we’ve got in our wagons, and so they lay their guns on you and they take what you’ve got, and you lie under the trees and rot, and nobody knows what happens to you. Is that the kind of work that appeals to you?”
“Has Flint made it through there?”
“Yes. But he’s lost a few loads doing it. Do you think you could beat that record?”
“I think that if I ever lost a load, you wouldn’t see me until I’d found that load and the men who got it. I’m not worried about getting through with it. All I want to know is what the job is worth to you.”
“It’s your life, not mine. We’ve had trouble getting through. What would it cost me for you to get through with a wagon of freight?”
“Two hundred dollars—payable when I get back and report that it got through.”
“Mister,” Faulkner said. “You have talked yourself up into pretty big size. And into a job. You’ll be prepared to take a train up to Buckhorn as soon as the river goes down enough for you to get across. Four or live days, maybe a week if we get more rain.”
Webster got to his feet. “You’ve got yourself a man. I’ll see you around.”
“In the meantime,” Faulkner said, “you might as well be earning your money. You go back to my stables and report to Joe Dunn. Tell him I said to put you to work until time to pull out.”
Webster laughed. “I’m afraid you misunderstood me. I didn’t hire out as a stable boy; I hired out as a wagon boss, and that’s what I’ll be. Pick up a boy somewhere to clean the stables. That all right with you?”
Faulkner’s mouth went tight, and he did not answer. Webster added, “I’ll be around, and I’ll take your wagons through the hills. That’s what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it?”
Faulkner wiped his skeletal forehead. “I want somebody to get them through. It seems that nobody in the world can get through those hills. You do, and you won’t have to worry about making money working for me.”
Webster left him then, and had supper down at the restaurant. Later he went into the Red River Bar and had a couple of drinks with Jake, who had not yet started out on his return trip. He passed around through the crowd, leaving his senses open, so that they might absorb anything that could have meaning to him. He h
adn’t learned much from Faulkner, but he had got his foot into things here, and that was enough for a start.
He stopped at one of the poker tables and watched the players a moment, then asked, “Open game, gents?”
One of the men nodded, and he pulled out a chair and bought a stack of chips. He was seated opposite young Emory Dustin, and he was giving more of his attention to the smiling blond face across from him than he was to his cards.
In half an hour of ups and downs, he had lost his stack of chips, and got up from the table, knowing things about Emory Dustin that disturbed him. He argued that it was none of his business, but he had been watching Dustin play, watching him make his bets, watching him win and, more importantly, watching him lose.
He knew now that the smile on Dustin’s good-looking young face was a perpetual mask. He was not a man of genuinely good nature as the smile told the world he was, but he had a stark money hunger, a greed that sparked from his eyes on occasion, and an arrogant rage which he did not completely conceal when he lost.
These qualities Dustin kept hidden behind his bland smile, but Webster had spent long years in reading the little signs in men, and he had read these signs in young Dustin, the cattle buyer who was the coming young man in Woodbine, so they said.
The Emory Dustin who was going to marry Sonia Swanson. And Sonia Swanson, from what Webster had seen of her, was a whole-hearted, a warm-hearted and sincere young girl who, if she gave her heart to this man, was laying herself open to certain disillusionment and heartbreak.
The Fifth Western Novel Page 24
