Rider on the Buckskin

by Peter Dawson

  Chapter Nine

  The settlement of Summit didn’t much impress a man. Riding its crooked street, Rivers saw the grimy windows of only two buildings showing lamplight against the gathering dusk. Most of the shacks and shanties and cabins appeared deserted, some with boarded-up windows, others with their steep-pitched roofs caved in, collapsed by the weight of the heavy snows of past winters.

  The place had a look of disuse about it that nonetheless made a man wonder if he wasn’t being watched, that made him suspect that there would be furtive comings and goings once darkness settled in. For this near-deserted town set deep in its timbered notch appeared to be the kind of place that invariably attracted the night riders, the ones on the high lonesome. It had a secretive, faintly sinister air about it.

  At the upper end of town Rivers came abreast a corral and a hump-roofed barn in good repair. Over the barn’s wide door a sign proclaimed:

  INTER-MOUNTAIN STAGES, ROOMS. MEALS.

  S.L. BANNISTER, PROP.

  It had been Rivers’s plan to cross the pass this evening and camp somewhere on the far side. But now, because he had been worrying something around in his mind on the way up here, and because the thought of a home-cooked meal suddenly made him realize he was very hungry, he gave the sign his prolonged attention, reining in on the buckskin and afterward noticing a white-chinked log cabin sitting on a knoll a hundred yards removed from the road.

  He thought: The food’s probably not worth throwing out. Yet there was a restlessness in him, a dissatisfaction over the way he had so summarily turned down Fred Bond’s offer this afternoon. And it was this alone that shortly prompted him to swing the buckskin over and up the barn’s snowy ramp.

  The ammoniac warmth of the barn was welcome after the bitter cold of the past hour, and, as Rivers stepped out of the saddle, a man carrying a lantern and a pitchfork appeared out of one of the back stalls along the runway and came toward him.

  “Can a man get a supper here this time of year?” Rivers asked as the other approached.

  “Sure can.” The man stopped a few strides away, his glance openly admiring the buckskin. “Mister, that’s one hell of a sweet chunk o’ horseflesh.”

  “He’ll do.” Rivers loosened the cinch. “I’ll be going on after I eat. Can you give them both a good feed of grain?”

  The man nodded, whereupon Rivers turned away. He had taken two steps toward the barn’s side door when he was told: “Better take that rifle and your possibles along. We got some sticky-fingered jokers hereabouts and I’ll be up at the house eatin’ with you.”

  Rivers went back to the buckskin to unleash his bedroll and take the Winchester from its scabbard, afterward leaving the barn and climbing the path to the cabin.

  So it was that, some twenty minutes later, he was sitting at a big table in the cabin’s cheery, lamplit kitchen with the hired man and old Stewart Bannister, owner of the station. Mag Bannister, graying and fat and genial, put a platter heaped with slices of elk roast on the table as the men turned their plates right side up. There were dumplings and stewed tomatoes and canned corn, coffee and pickles and jam and fresh-baked bread. And there were apple pies in the oven.

  There was no talk as the woman joined them and they filled their plates, then fell to. Once Rivers paused long enough to say—“Ma’am, you’re going to lose money on me.”—his remark wreathing Mag Bannister’s wrinkled face with a pleased smile.

  The pie was as good as the rest of the meal, and the woman insisted on Rivers eating a second big slab, which she cut as she had the first, by quartering a pie. When Rivers had finished that and started on his second mug of coffee, he was so full he couldn’t have gagged down another mouthful.

  He packed his pipe and lit it as Mag Bannister began clearing the table. The hostler and Bannister were garrulously wondering if by morning they would be plowing the road higher along the pass. Neither man appeared to be paying Rivers much attention.

  As he listened to the whine of the wind about the eaves beyond the kitchen window, it struck Rivers as being somewhat incongruous that he should find an old couple like the Bannisters, so patently honest and outgiving, living out their lives in such a sorry settlement as this. And presently, when the two men had talked out the subject of the probable depth of the drifts up on the pass, he picked his moment to remark: “There didn’t seem to be many folks stirring about when I came up the street just now. Got the place pretty much to yourselves?”

  Bannister gave his wife a wry, half-smiling glance. “It’s that kind of a town. Set fire to the place and you’d flush out half a hundred of the shadiest characters in the territory. They stick by themselves and let us pretty much alone.” Then, as though in apology, he added: “Wasn’t like this when we came here twenty years back, though, right after the War Between the States. There was gold back in those days, not much but enough to keep the town goin’. And settlers stopping over to stay safe from the hostiles. None of this riff-raff. Why, we even had a hotel and what passed for an opera house. But then the country opened up and the business folk moved on down to the Springs. Mag and I sometimes wonder why we stay on. Guess it’s because it’s home.”

  Mag Bannister, doing the dishes at the side counter, used her apron now to wipe the soapsuds from her flabby arms, turning to look at Rivers narrowly in a way that made him sense she was sizing him up. “Pa,” she said abruptly, “why don’t you ask him?”

  Bannister’s face flushed and he avoided Rivers’s eyes. “You mind your own affairs, Mag.”

  “But we got a right to know.” Her expression was challenging, almost angry as she stared at Rivers once more, in another moment blurting out: “Would you be the man that packed Sam Cauble down off the mountain this morning?”

  Frank Rivers’s lean face went slack, startled at the directness and unexpectedness of the question. He took the pipe from his mouth, nodding. “I am, ma’am.”

  “See, I was right.” The woman glanced briefly, triumphantly at her husband before asking: “What’s got into that devil Pleasants? First his fence. Then trying to put the blame on a complete stranger for something he couldn’t help because he happened to be riding that trail. And all this nonsense about Kate and Fred hiring you to cut fence.”

  Rivers shook his head, remembering now that a stage had passed him headed up the pass road shortly after he had left Ute Springs this afternoon. He supposed, and rightly, that the driver must have brought these people word of the killing and the inquest.

  “It appears Pleasants is that kind,” he remarked. “The kind that shoots off his mouth before he thinks a thing through.”

  It occurred to him that he was describing Pleasants in much the same way Kate had up there along the trail at his camp this morning. And he saw now how he could possibly steer the conversation around to his primary reason for being here. “You know the Bonds pretty well?” he asked.

  “Kate and Fred?” Mag Bannister smiled wistfully. “Since before they could walk.”

  “Then maybe you can tell me why Pleasants is making it so hard for them. Why the fence, to begin with?”

  “Because Kate jilted him,” Bannister stated in no uncertain terms.

  “Now, Pa, you don’t know that to be a fact.”

  “No, but I got eyes and ears. Pleasants was squirin’ Kate around all last summer. Then real quick-like he wasn’t.”

  The woman shook her head. “No telling about that. But the fence is there, more’s the pity. It was bad enough, Kate and Fred losing their folks. Now this has to happen.”

  “How did they lose their folks?” Rivers had wondered about this on his ride up here.

  It was Bannister who answered him. “Amy and John had gone on a trip back East to visit their families in Saint Louis. They were on their way back up the Missouri on a steamer when the boilers blew. Drowned ’em, along with sixty other poor souls. We miss havin’ ’em drive across here to visit like they used to.”

  “Is there a way across to Anchor from here?” Rivers wanted to
know.

  Bannister nodded. “A track cuts off to the north half a mile below town here. Takes you past Phil Crowe’s line camp and straight to Anchor.”

  The name Bannister had mentioned gave Rivers the chance he had been waiting for, and now he drawled: “Isn’t Crowe the one Fred’s trying to make a deal with so as to get his beef off his range after he thins down his herd?”

  The stage station owner gave his wife a surprised glance. “Hadn’t heard. But if Fred’s got any hope there, he can forget it. Crowe’s been on the outs with Anchor for years. He’d like to see Anchor turned into a two-bit spread.”

  Rivers was staring vacantly down at his hands, rubbing the pipe’s bowl and not liking what he was hearing. Stubbornly then, still trying to believe he had been right in the decision he had made this afternoon, he asked: “Then can’t Anchor make its drive over the mountain and down to the railroad at Bend?”

  Bannister sighed worriedly. “Hear that wind out there? Tonight it’ll drift the peak country tight shut. And maybe there’s more snow on the way.” His look turned ugly then as he softly said: “Damn Pleasants and his wire.”

  Rivers was still arguing with himself. “Doesn’t the law say a man can’t close off a road with a fence? Can’t the Bonds drive their beef straight down to Ute Springs along the road that leads to their layout?”

  “Across Beavertail? Not the way Pleasants has rigged it,” Bannister countered. “He’s left the road open, sure. But his wire runs right smack along it on both sides all the way across his land. Ever try drivin’ a half-wild bunch of whitefaces down a lane of barb wire? Can’t be done. They’d bust the fence, get tangled in the wire, and take off every which way. Then Fred and Kate would have a lawsuit on their hands.”

  “Then what’s the answer?”

  Bannister turned his hands palms up on the table. “Prayer, maybe. Could be the good Lord’ll bring on a thaw and let them drive their beef over the mountain. But at times like this a man begins to lose his faith.”

  “Pa, that’s no way to talk.”

  Suddenly, and without knowing exactly what had brought about the change in him, Frank Rivers was seeing things differently.

  He would pay for his supper, hit the road again. Only he was going back down through town, not over the pass. He was riding across to Anchor. There was a full moon tonight, which would make it a simple matter to find his way.

  Chapter Ten

  Phil Crowe’s Pat Hand had years ago lost whatever semblance to grandeur it once possessed. It had become dingy and dirty, ill-lit and stale-aired, for Crowe was the kind of man who bothered not the slightest about neatness or any of the niceties.

  The saloon’s ornate mahogany bar with its heavy brass fittings hadn’t once been polished since Crowe bought the place, nor had the massive and cobwebbed glass chandelier hanging from the center of the narrow room had so much as one of its miniature oil lamps dusted or lighted since the beginning of the man’s tenure.

  One midnight, year before last, a customer the worse off for drink had stood leaning against the bar indulging himself in some practice with a handgun. His bullets had expertly broken two arms from one side of the chandelier before Crowe somehow managed to interrupt his sport by tapping him hard across the temple with a bottle.

  The chandelier still sagged to one side. And tonight Lute Pleasants, the Pat Hand’s lone customer, noticed this and set his glass on the sticky counter, observing to Crowe who stood opposite him behind the front end of the bar: “You ought to wire that thing back in place. Makes the room look trashy.”

  “Trash is the only trade I get, so why bother?”

  “Present company included?”

  Crowe merely shrugged in answer. He was a gaunt, unshaven, and seedy-looking man whose tobacco-yellowed mustache matched the habitual drooping contour of his thin lips. Tonight, as always, he wore a gray derby. And just now he reached up to push it far back on his baldpate, raising his voice to make himself heard over a wind gust rattling the street door. “So you got extra wire and posts. And three men to string fence for me. But what else?”

  Pleasants, hardly knowing this man except for his reputation of being miserly and none too honest, had been expecting some such question for the past twenty minutes. So he frowned in mock puzzlement, blandly answering: “Staples, of course.”

  “That ain’t what I mean.” The saloon man lifted a hand from the counter and pointedly rubbed thumb against middle finger.

  Pleasants straightened. “Cash besides?”

  “What the hell do I want of a fence unless it brings me in something?”

  “Brings you in something?” Pleasants echoed dryly. “Didn’t I hear you once spent some time in the lockup waiting trial on a rustling charge old Bond trumped up against you? Wouldn’t you like to see Anchor paid back for that, wired up there tight with no way out for their beef?”

  A thin, unamused smile straightened the corners of Crowe’s mouth. “Bond never knew it, but he paid plenty for what he did to me.”

  “And his kids are still paying for it?” Pleasants asked pointedly.

  “Didn’t say that,” came Crowe’s cautious answer. “But your fence would only be in my way unless there was some money put up besides. Look what you’re.…”

  Something out on the street caught his attention then and he glanced toward the grimy window at the front of the room. The light out there was nearly gone, but Pleasants, also looking out there, saw the vague shapes of a rider and a pack animal move past and out of sight toward the lower end of town.

  Instantly a hard alarm rode through him. This could be no one but Frank Rivers. And Rivers was unmistakably headed back down the cañon, not toward the pass.

  “There goes your friend,” Crowe unexpectedly announced.

  “What friend?”

  “The ranny you had the run-in with today. The one that was with Cauble when he cashed in. He come through here an hour or so ago. Headed for the pass, so I thought. Must’ve changed his mind.”

  Pleasants eyed the man narrowly, wondering how the news of Rivers could have traveled so fast. But then he realized that Crowe, having managed so long to survive in this unsavory settlement, must have ways of hearing things. He was evidently a man of considerable though peculiar talents. It was a thing to remember.

  Beavertail’s owner shrugged the thought aside, saying: “Who cares? Let’s get on with this other.”

  The saloon man was still eyeing the window in a puzzled, frowning way. And it was as though he hadn’t heard Pleasants as he observed: “What’s he goin’ back down for when he just got here?”

  Pleasants would have given a lot to have had an answer to the question. But because that was impossible, and because he was all at once anxious to be gone from here, to follow Rivers, he asked: “Where were we?”

  Crowe looked around at him. “We was talkin’ about a little sweetener to go with the fence.” He caught Pleasants’s quick shake of the head, went on: “Any day now young Bond’ll be along makin’ me an offer for lettin’ him drive his beef down across my spread. A cash offer. I could use an extra piece of change. I need your fence about as bad as I do a mess o’ silk shirts.”

  Pleasants slowly twirled his glass on the counter, seeming to study it as he deliberated the saloon man’s ultimatum. In reality he was recalling something that had occurred to him on his way down here; he was firming it in his mind.

  Crowe misread his preoccupation and made the mistake of adding: “So you got no choice.”

  “That so?” Pleasants glanced across obliquely at him, a spare smile breaking over his square face. “That’s too bad. I figured you’d do it for just the fence.”

  “Nope. It’d take at least three hundred besides to make it a deal.”

  “Now would it?” Pleasants asked innocently. Then casually he drawled: “Well, it looks like Echols is going to have to know about those hides buried up on your place. The ones with the Anchor brands.”

  Crowe came bolt upright. It was as thoug
h he had been prodded with the point of a knife. His beady eyes came wider open. “Hides buried on my layout?” he echoed hollowly. “How could that be?”

  The Beavertail man stood there with the fingers of his right hand idly drumming the wood. He nodded sagely. “It not only could be, it is, friend.”

  Crowe’s beady eyes suddenly blazed with righteous anger. “By God, if there’s Anchor hides buried anywhere hereabouts, you buried ’em! Any hide I ever wanted to get rid of I always burned.”

  “Not these, you didn’t.” Pleasants coolly looked the other up and down. “Of course, with all this snow a man’d have to know exactly where to dig. But that could be arranged.”

  “You wouldn’t dare.…”

  All at once Pleasants’s square face took on a flintiness. “The hides are there, Crowe. And I know where to find them.” He worded the lie baldly, bluntly. “Now does that fence go in, or doesn’t it?”

  The saloon man closed his eyes and shook his head as though trying to clear a fogged brain. His face had gone a pasty gray. Before he had the chance to speak, Pleasants added: “After all these years of your bleeding Anchor white, it’s finally catching up with you. Unless.…”

  “You’re lyin’!” Crowe burst out. “There ain’t no hides!”

  Pleasants shrugged. “Want to lay any bets on it?”

  Crowe did an unusual thing for him then. He turned to the backbar, took down a tumbler, and reached over with trembling hands to half fill it from the bottle Pleasants had been using. Not being a drinking man, he nonetheless emptied the glass at one gulp, afterward wiping his mustache with the back of a hand.

  Yet despite the whiskey all the starch had gone out of him as he muttered lifelessly: “They’d believe it, too. Those slickers down below been wantin’ all these years to saddle me with something.”

  “So they have.” Pleasants paused, letting the words carry their weight. Then, half turning away and buttoning his coat, he said: “The boys’ll move the chuck wagon and the tent across tomorrow.”