by H. V. Elkin
Reissuing classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
Ben Harmon and his fellow ranchers were worried. A wild stallion was running off with all their horses and every attempt to capture it failed. They knew they were left with only one alternative – to call in John Cutler.
But as soon as Cutler saw the stallion, he knew this was no ordinary assignment, for this was no ordinary mustang. Its name was Mesteño, and it was like no animal Cutler had ever stalked before!
TABLE OF CONTENT
Acknowledgement
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
About the Author
The Series
About Piccadilly Publishing
Copyright
This book is for David Yozamp, who knows horses.
Chapter One
A full moon lit up the light sprinkle of snow as it descended through the night air. By the time the snow settled down, it became a gentle shading of the landscape. It settled on everything that lived or slept out of doors. It settled on the dark outline of a horse that stood poised and alert on a rise in the land. From a distance the pale light showed only the outline of the animal, but every muscle of the horse, every sense, was alert, ready for any threat that might appear unexpectedly. The horse saw more than a man could see from a distance and at night. It was looking down to a corral.
In the corral were eleven horses. They were different from the one watching them from the hill. They had been ridden by men. The outline of saddles still flattened their back hairs. Their natural instincts for loyalty to a band had been transferred to the men who rode them to the corral where they waited patiently. But now they had become restless; they pawed the earth and a great energy went from one to another, building as it went. A power was being generated in the corral, a power that could only be sensed by another horse. Their eyes wide, they looked to the ghostly horse on the hill and then toward the illuminated windows of the house.
Behind these frosty panes there was a sound that was foreign to nature. To man, it was music and the stomping of heels in a dance and noise and laughter that was fired with whiskey-laced punch. Beyond the windows, there was light and movement. There were colorful, starched skirts that twirled with a sound tike rustling paper. They were contrasted by the dark finery of the cowboys who were the ladies’ partners in the dance. Swinging away from one of the ladies, a tall, gangly cowboy danced a jig with inspired frenzy, while the others who circled around him clapped their hands in time to the music and allowed him his moment of glory.
At the side of the room, a dark figure was transfixed against the flowered wallpaper and watched the scene through the blood-red punch in his glass. The whites of his eyes had red streaks that gave him an intense, hungry and potentially dangerous look. He turned his glass to the left and looked beyond the dancers and saw the red image of a girl.
He lowered his glass and stared at her. Now she was transformed into a tall, beautiful woman with long hair the color of a bay mare. Its reddish-brown curls framed a face with large green eyes and even features, a strong nose, a determined chin and, when she smiled, teeth too white and perfect for this part of the country. She wore a green dress that matched the color of her eyes, but the similarity had to be an accident because she did not have the feminine instincts to connive to appear more striking than she was. She wore the dress like an uncomfortable costume and would have been more at home in Levis and a cotton shirt and astride a horse. The redness of her cheeks was put there by nature and her life spent outdoors. Although this was her home, she was no more comfortable in it or in this social situation than she was in the dress and wearing her hair down. Right now, she was someone to be careful with.
But the cowboy did not know how to be careful when sober, let alone with a glass of punch in his hand. He never had much cause to be careful and he never learned how to be. Now, above his bloodshot eyes, his dark eyebrows looked menacing. He stood over six feet tall and the muscles that made his black suit bulge had always been all he needed to take care of himself. He never felt naked without his gun and holster. And he did not feel naked without the mustache he had shaved that night. He had shaved it as a kind of ritual, like a bullfighter dressed with elaborate ritual, each movement a confirmation of the intent to be victorious in the ring. It was the cowboy’s intent to be victorious with the girl tonight, and he did not care whether or not she liked it. He put the glass down, stood up straight, wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve and was ready to enter the ring.
A hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. “What do you say, Tom? Is it worth it or not?”
The cowboy turned sharply, ready to swing, until he realized he was facing the boss. “Oh, yeah, Ben. Real nice hoedown.”
The boss could still get into his wedding suit but he was not any more comfortable in it now than he was the first time he wore it. An aversion to dressing up was something he had passed down to that daughter of his who was standing over there on the other side of the room and not getting into the spirit of the party. But that was where the family resemblance ended. Ben Harmon was short and had the rugged features of a stone statue, features that had been chiseled by sun and sweat, freezing wind, and hard work. The only thing remotely soft about him was a big brown mustache, and even that sometimes looked like it was made out of cactus needles. He was a hard man of fifty-six years but could still do everything he could when he was a younger man. He was proud of that, and he was not about to move into town leaving most of the running of the ranch to his foreman, Tom, even when his wife pleaded with him, even when it looked like she was going to die. Then, after she did, it did not matter.
“Tom Chase,” Harmon said, with a glimmer that did not often get into his eyes, “has my top screw been doin’ some elbow bendin’ tonight?”
Chase grinned, showing a flash of uneven teeth for a moment. “Anything worth doing’s worth doin’ right, ain’t it?”
Harmon laughed. “You bet. Enjoy yourself. That’s what we’re here for. But I wasn’t askin’ you if you thought it was a decent hoedown. I was askin’ if it was worth it?”
Chase shook his head. He would not know the answer to that until he had made his play for Harmon’s daughter. “Don’t rightly know.”
“I mean,” Harmon said, “you think we ought to be celebratin’ Utah gettin’ to be a state finally or not? Is it worth celebratin’?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know the answer to that one, Ben.”
Harmon filled a glass from the punch bowl, drank and wiped his mustache. “No, guess nobody knows the answer to that one. By the time we do, it won’t make any difference. Be too late to change it then, won’t it?”
“Too late already, you ask me.”
“Guess that’s right, too. With what the Government’s done to us, not sure we’re gonna be any better off than we were as a territory or whatever the hell they called us. Didn’t want to have anything to do with us while we was nothin’ but Mormon heaven, and maybe we was better off. Maybe now I’ll wake up some mornin’, look out my window and see some shack’s gone up next door, the Union’s present to some nester that doesn’t know a bit from a hackamore.”
“Won’t be no shack built on this land long’s I’m the foreman, Ben. Don’t you worry none about that. It’s your land free and clear and it’s gonna stay that way.”
Harmon clapped Chase on the shoulder. “You’re a good man, Tom. If you wasn’t halfway drunk, you’d know I was halfway jokin’. But that don’t matter. Drunk or sober, your heart’s always in the ri
ght place.”
One of the ranch hands overheard this and turned to his sidekick. “Where’s that right place Tom keeps his heart?”
“Heard tell it was in a safe in Castle Gate.”
“Well, if it is, that’s one bank don’t have to worry ‘bout any big withdrawals.”
Harmon and Chase did not hear this, which was fortunate for the two cowboys. Otherwise they would have been told to pull their pins and drift.
The cowboys were smart enough to keep their voices down and not drunk enough to raise them. Jobs were scarce these days, and especially scarce in the winter, and they did not favor the idea of having to ride the grub line until spring. They kept up their spirits by ribbing Chase behind his back, and years in the saddle working under all kinds of foremen had given them the endurance they needed against bad personalities like Chase. They had jobs, and that was more important than anything else, next to their pride. And pride was something you kept to yourself, so it never got exposed to Chase, and they never had to do anything about keeping it. Grinning at each other over their private joke, they drifted off toward the edge of the crowd and joined in the hand clapping for the cowboy who was just starting to jig himself into a lather.
“She looks real pretty tonight, don’t she?” Harmon asked.
“Who?”
“Why that daughter of mine, Tom. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. I been watchin’ you lookin’ her over.”
“Guess she looks all right.”
“Lot like her mother in looks, ain’t she?”
“Don’t remember Mrs. Harmon too well, Ben.”
“Then take my word for it. Ellen there’s got her mother’s looks and my disposition. Figure she could run this ranch if she had to.”
“Guess she could at that.”
“’Less she got married to somebody else who could run things around here.”
Chase looked to Harmon to see if he had gotten the tone of voice right, and Harmon was grinning. Chase had heard him right. He knew that he had her father’s support. Getting Ellen’s interest might be quite another matter. There were half a dozen girls at the party who would have jumped at the chance of getting just one look from Chase. He had a good job and looked okay in a rough kind of way. But of course none of them had ever ridden with Chase or worked cattle with him. Ellen had.
“Now, Tom,” Harmon said, “that’s my daughter standin’ over there, and I don’t want to see her get hurt. But I don’t want her endin’ up an old maid either.”
“That ain’t my intention,” Chase said.
“But she ain’t like none of the other fillies here either, and I think you know that.”
“Maybe I do.”
“I don’t take sass from any man,” Harmon said, “but with that girl it’s different, and she’s too old to whip. Not sure I could manage it anyway.”
“She’d give you a run for your money, I reckon.”
“Damn right she would. But I’ll tell you one thing. She won’t be hitchin’ up with anyone less she’s tamed first. And she’s been wild for a long time now. Maybe I was too soft with her after her mother died. Anyway, the upshot is she’s as ornery as any bronc that ain’t been broken. Long’s she stays that way I won’t be seein’ any grandchildren to pass this ranch down to.”
“Hey, Ben!” a rancher shouted from across the room where he was watching the jig. “Come over here and take a look at this.”
“Have another drink, Tom,” Harmon said and left him to join the rancher.
Chase was not worried about what Harmon had said. As far as he was concerned, there was no animal he could not tame and that included the one they called a woman. If he had taken a different trail to Utah, he might have been a Mormon and glad of it. It might be against God and nature the way some folks said it was, but having a herd of females instead of just one made some kind of sense to Chase. That put the whole thing into some kind of right perspective. Now he was getting ready to go after just one and that took some effort, and that made him a little mad. He started to take another drink and, when he caught himself doing it and realized why he was doing it, that made him even madder. “To hell with this!” he said under his breath and walked over to Ellen, looking her straight in the eye the way he would approach a snarling dog to get the better of it.
She saw him coming and her eyes warned him to stop right where he was. She had put up with his nonsense before and if he thought she was going to be polite to him just because they had guests, he was sorely mistaken.
The message never got through to him and, even if it had, he could not back away now. He knew how to keep the ranch hands in line, and Ellen for all her ability to ride and rope was still just a girl. What was more, tonight she looked like one.
When he got up to her he grinned in that familiar way that irritated her so, and he said, “Nice party.” The way he said it, it sounded to her like it was a secret they shared, and she wanted to share nothing with Tom Chase.
“I think it’s a lot of foolishness,” she said, and looked away from him as though he was a common trail cook or a new wrangler. He had seen her give hands like that more friendliness than she had for him now. Maybe she did not know it, but that kind of behavior to him only made him more determined. He was not going to let her get away with that.
“Hey!” he yelled so loudly that the fiddle hesitated a moment and the cowboy stopped his jig with one foot raised. But when everyone saw it was just more of what they had already seen enough of, they turned back to the dancer. The fiddle and the jig continued.
She glared at him coldly. “Hay is what we feed the horses,” she said. “Maybe you’d be more at home with them.”
He grinned. “Hay is also what a man and a woman can lie down on, if they’ve a mind to.”
“You shut your dirty mouth!” She started to walk away.
He grabbed her arm and held her. “Hey,” he said a little more quietly.
She turned and wrenched her arm away. “Don’t you dare lay a hand on me, Mr. Chase, or I’ll lay one on you that you won’t forget right away.”
He held out his hands the way he would when riding up to a stranger to show he meant no harm. “No offense.”
“Maybe not for you.”
“I just like people to look at me when I’m talkin’ to ’em.”
“Do you think you’re something special to look at?”
“Some think so.”
“Well, maybe some just don’t have the sense they was born with, Mr. Chase.”
“Now, why don’t you and me just bury the hatchet, Ellen. This has been goin’ on long enough, and tonight it’s a party.”
“I’d hate to tell you where I’d like to bury the hatchet, Mr. Chase. I know how sensitive you can get about things like that. Funny thing how you’re plenty sensitive if somebody looks at you the wrong way, and yet you can’t even tell when somebody doesn’t want to have anything to do with you.” She strode over to the punch bowl, dipped out a full glass and drank it down.
He was beside her. “Suppose we dance, just for old times’ sake.”
She glared at him, then spoke slowly as she might to a child. “Old times is just what the problem is. I was nice enough to you at first. Maybe you don’t remember that.”
“Sure I do.”
“But then you must’ve figured that just because I was bein’ nice to you I was interested in you somehow. That’s when I saw what a blamed fool you were. Now listen to me, Mr. Chase. I don’t want to have to say it again. I am not interested in you except as my father’s foreman. For some reason, he thinks you’re the right man for that job, and that’s his business. But that’s the extent of what your responsibilities are ever goin’ to be around here. You got that straight? You and me’ll get along just fine if you stick to your job and don’t pester me.”
“And what if I don’t?”
“Then I just might go find me that hatchet and bury it where it’ll do the most good.”
He laughed loudly, reached out and grab
bed her arm again. “Let’s talk about it while we’re dancin’, Ellen.”
She went stiff and held her ground. Her words came out measured and icy. “Take your hand off me. I told you once. I’m tellin’ you again. And for the last time.”
He grinned and started to pull her toward the dance floor. She skidded along for a few feet, finding it hard to get her footing in the uncomfortable woman shoes she was wearing for the third time in her life. She slid right next to his feet, then bent her knees and with his own feet unsteady because of the punch, he buckled at the knees. Taking advantage of his momentary loss of balance, she grabbed his hair, pulled his head back and kneed him sharply in the back of the neck. Then as she backed away to let him fall, she gave him a slap on the face that was so loud it stopped the jig and the music. And Chase fell flat on his back.
The music did not start up again this time. And the sweating cowboy who had been jigging was transfixed by the scene, not minding that he had lost everyone’s attention and glad to give his own attention to the new entertainment.
Chase was stunned for a moment as he lay there on the floor. When he regained his senses and realized how foolish he must look to have been floored by a woman, he saved face by forcing a laugh.
Harmon found himself in a difficult situation. He supposed he had some responsibility to his guests for maintaining a friendly party. Some of the ladies were obviously shocked or at least knew enough to pretend to be shocked for the benefit of the men, the ones that were their husbands or the ones they hoped would be. Maybe Harmon should stop his daughter from pursuing her tussle with Chase. She looked like she was ready to hold her ground if it killed her. Harmon knew she would do just that if he did not step in and try to break it up. Besides, if Ellen did get the better of Chase, the foreman was going to be a hard man to get along with for the next few days. On the other hand, if Harmon did enter the fray, he could just as easily become a part of it and only be fanning some of the flames that might, on an off chance, die down of their own accord. After weighing these things in his mind, which he did very quickly because it looked like Chase was going to get over his laughing jag in a minute, Harmon did what was natural for him. He made it a policy never to step into someone else’s fight. He figured fights were the way some people established their dominance over others. He figured that was the way it had to be. Otherwise nobody would know who was supposed to give orders and who was supposed to take them. He could not imagine living in a world like that. So he waited like everyone else to see how the adversaries were going to resolve their differences. He nudged the rancher who had called him over to look at the jig, winked and pointed. In this way, he communicated his sly acceptance of the situation and invited others to share it with him. The rancher smiled and nodded like a schoolboy who had put a snake in the teacher’s desk drawer and was waiting for her to open it.
