Rider on the Buckskin

by Peter Dawson

  His face went slack. He looked first at Fred, who came down along the counter now to stand opposite him, then at Frank, who had halted at the front end of the bar. He didn’t say anything, neither did Fred nor Frank.

  Finally Fred’s half smile and the strained silence wore at Crowe’s nerves until he abruptly came out with: “Echols stopped by this afternoon and told me all about it, Bond. I swear to God I had nothing to do with that trouble you ran into last night.”

  Fred nodded sagely, his expression turning mock-sober. “Wonder who did?”

  The saloon man only shrugged and shook his head, not replying.

  “Pleasants?”

  Crowe’s look turned wary. “Them three work for me now. They just up and did it on their own.”

  “And they work for you.” Once again Fred nodded. He eyed a gallon jug sitting on the counter close by, and then, as though deciding he would have a drink, he reached out and uncorked it. Crowe, seeing this, turned to the back shelves and reached for a glass.

  By the time he faced the bar again Fred had tipped the jug on its side. It gurgled and began spilling its contents out across the sticky bar top. Crowe opened his mouth to protest, closed it again without speaking, suddenly sensing that he was in for trouble.

  The jug was half full and Fred deliberately emptied it, seeming fascinated in watching the whiskey puddle the boards, then spill onto the floor.

  The men at the poker layout, having glanced up when Crowe first spoke, watched all this with a scowling, truculent attention until finally one of them, a thick-set individual with close-cropped chin whiskers, laid down his cards and came up out of his chair, calling: “Need any help, Phil?”

  Before Crowe could answer, Frank Rivers’s soft drawl struck across at him: “Sit down.”

  The man swung part way around to face this tall stranger. His eyes brightened with malice and for a moment his arms bent slightly, as though he was thinking of the gun he wore butt-foremost high at the left side of his waist.

  But something in Frank’s lazy stance, in the way he wore his .44 thonged low on his thigh, and in the fact that he hadn’t bothered to straighten or even move his elbow from the counter, carried its unmistakable warning.

  And when Frank repeated himself just as softly as he had spoken the first time—“Sit down.”—the other gripped the arms of his caboose-chair and grudgingly lowered his bulk back down into it.

  Fred, having seen all this, now set the empty jug upright, looking at Crowe once more to say: “You and Pleasants are a bit late with your fence. We’re driving our beef across your place tonight. The herd’ll be on the road below here in another hour.”

  The saloon man’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he swallowed with apparent difficulty. When he didn’t say anything, Fred went on: “We stranded your crew afoot tonight. Pleasants, too. He was there. Tomorrow, when they’ve hoofed it after their nags, maybe you better have Pleasants tell ’em to fill in those post holes. Because you’re not stringin’ that fence.”

  “The hell you say. No Bond ever told me what to do.”

  “This Bond’s telling you.”

  Fred’s mild-spoken words had barely been uttered when he reached for the jug again. Only this time he picked it up by its handle, drew it back over his shoulder, and suddenly hurled it straight at the center of the long fly-specked mirror that ran the ten-foot length of the backbar shelves.

  The crash of the jug smashing the heavy glass sent a tremor along the counter and drowned out Crowe’s hoarse and angry cry. The mirror shattered into hundreds of fragments that came jangling down over the shelves and onto the floor, knocking over a few glasses and bottles.

  Crowe, his look furious, stooped quickly and was reaching in under the bar when Frank Rivers called sharply: “No you don’t!”

  His voice seemed to paralyze the saloon owner. Very slowly, very carefully Crowe straightened and resignedly laid his empty hands palms down on his whiskey-puddled bar.

  Somehow he managed to find the voice to breathe: “That’ll cost you a hundred dollars, Bond.”

  “Only a hundred?” Fred’s swollen face took on a wry grin. He looked down at his bad arm in its sling, lifting his elbow from his side, asking: “Wonder what this bum arm ought to cost you?”

  When Crowe chose not to answer, Fred unexpectedly moved on back and around the end of the bar. The saloon man turned slowly to watch Fred, his eyes going narrow-lidded as he waited to see what this meant. Fred gave him only a brief moment to wonder. For suddenly with a swing of his good arm he swept a triple tier of glasses from the bottom backbar shelf. The jangle of the breaking glass had barely died away before he swung his arm again, this time emptying the top shelf of two dozen full bottles and stoneware jugs.

  A hush lay over the room following the crashing pound of the bottles breaking against the floor planks. Crowe, surveying the ruin about him, appeared stunned, bewildered. The men at the poker layout sat, rigid and unmoving, plainly awed by the violence they had witnessed.

  Frank Rivers chose this moment to say: “Let’s get back to Pleasants. What did he do, pay you to put in that fence, Crowe?”

  The saloon man spun around to face him, snarling: “Be damned to you both! That fence goes in. I’ll string it if it takes my last.…”

  His words broke off as he saw Frank move in behind the bar’s front end, as he watched the tall man lean back against the shelves at the far end of the empty mirror frame and lift a boot high and place it against the inner edge of the counter. Then, as Frank all at once pushed against the bar, tilting it outward, Crowe shouted: “Don’t! By God, I’ll …!”

  The long bar creaked, tipped precariously, overbalanced, and fell outward with a thundering crash that set the lamps to swaying, which brought a back corner of the ceiling showering down in a smother of plaster dust. Kegs that had sat on the shelf under the bar fell on their sides, two buckets of water clanked and spilled their contents across the floor. Three of the men at the table pushed back their chairs, half rose, then sat slowly down again.

  And Crowe, driven beyond the point of reason at seeing the ruin of his bar, suddenly lunged for the shotgun he had reached for a minute ago.

  Fred saw that, moved in, and hit him behind the ear with a swing that had all the drive of his aching body behind it. The saloon man, already stooping over, fell out across his capsized bar and lay groaning, reaching feebly for the shotgun that Fred snatched from under his hand.

  Lining the shotgun at the men at the table, Fred swung a boot and ungently prodded Crowe in the ribs. “On your feet!”

  Crowe hung his head and awkwardly shoved himself back until he was resting on his knees. Fred poked him in the ribs with the shotgun’s twin barrels. “All right, let’s have it. How much did Pleasants pay you to string that fence?”

  The saloon owner looked up at him, eyes dull with pain and outrage. When he didn’t say anything, Frank drawled: “Suppose we finish taking the place apart, Fred.”

  Crowe called hoarsely—“No!”—and found the strength to stagger erect now. All the starch had gone out of him and he asked miserably: “What is it you want to know?”

  “How much did Pleasants pay for the fence?”

  Shaking his head to clear his befuddled senses, Crowe peered around at Frank to answer acidly: “Not one damned dollar. He rigged it so I didn’t have a chance to turn him down. Said he knew where I’d buried some Anchor hides, which was a lie.”

  “How long ago was this?” Frank wanted to know.

  “The other night? Three, four nights ago?”

  All at once Frank came hard alert. “Which night?”

  The saloon man at first only shook his head. But then his glance sharpened, and he said: “The night it froze and blew so hard. You ought to remember. You was up here and turned around and rode back down again.”

  “Pleasants was with you that night?” Frank’s tone was roughened by an excitement he was finding it hard to hold in check. “What time did he leave?”

  “Rig
ht after we saw you go past on your way back down.” Crowe sighed wearily, saying: “Now will the two of you clear the hell out and leave me be?”

  Frank looked at Fred, who broke the shotgun, took out the shells, and tossed the weapon out across the room so that it hit a chair, knocking it over. Fred stepped on past Crowe, then, drawling: “Remember, fill in those post holes.”

  Crowe was too humbled to think of a retort as Frank and Fred walked on up to the door. Fred halted there to face around and say: “The man that shows his head outside this door over the next minute is liable to get his hair parted where it’ll hurt.”

  He backed out onto the street, following Frank, and slammed the door.

  Neither Crowe nor any of the men at the table so much as stirred until after the hoof pound of a pair of horses had faded out of hearing down the empty street.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Shortly after midnight Phil Crowe locked the doors of the Pat Hand and, carrying a lantern, crossed the alley, and disappeared inside his small stable. Some minutes later he rode a roan horse down the alley that was now palely lit by the waning moon, which hung above the notch of the pass high to the east.

  Below town, Crowe turned into the side road leading to his line camp and Anchor. Once through the notch that hemmed in the track for the first quarter mile, he angled off to the west through the hills and rode for ten minutes before turning north again and following the general direction of the road, thus wisely taking the precaution that he shouldn’t again tonight run afoul of anyone from Anchor.

  A short time later he plainly heard the bawling of cattle out of the upcountry distance, the sound serving to sour his disposition to such a point that he raged volubly and acidly for a considerable interval.

  It took him the better part of another hour to sight the fire of his fence camp, and a figure pacing slowly before it. He knew at once that this was Lute Pleasants, and he found a certain grim pleasure in the way the man, on hearing the roan’s approach, hurried back into the shadows beyond the blaze.

  “It’s me, Crowe!” he called as he went on in.

  He was stepping from the saddle before Pleasants showed himself again, and before two blanket-shrouded figures, Harry and Ben, roused themselves off near the ruin of the tent, got up, and came over to the fire to stare sleepily at him.

  “What’s on your mind?” Pleasants wanted to know.

  “Hear you had yourselves some callers tonight,” Crowe smugly remarked, pointedly surveying the tent’s charred remains.

  Pleasants stared at him stonily a long moment. “How would you know that?”

  A deep resentment still burned in the saloon man. Right now he saw Lute Pleasants as being responsible for all the troubles that had plagued him tonight. Without preliminary, and in a bitter voice, he told the Beavertail man what had happened at the Pat Hand. Pleasants listened without once interrupting, without in fact showing any emotion beyond a none-too-strict attention, until Crowe finished by testily stating: “So I figure you owe me around two hundred dollars. You can damn’ well pay up or I’ll.…”

  “Or you’ll what?” Pleasants’s tone was chill, challenging.

  “Or I’ll be down at the Springs come mornin’ seein’ Jim Echols.”

  Pleasants found something amusing in the words and he smiled, very faintly. “You will?” he drawled. “And how would you get there? Walk?”

  The way Crowe’s high indignation so suddenly vanished before a look of utter astonishment made Pleasants laugh raucously in genuine merriment. He caught the way the saloon man’s glance shuttled to the roan in futile understanding. Then he was telling Harry and Ben: “Boys, take Phil across there and pour him some coffee. Then see if you can find him a blanket. He’s spending the night with you. And I’m not.”

  Crowe dismally saw the completeness of the trap he’d ridden into even before Pleasants sauntered over to take the saddle from the roan, heave it aside, cinch another in its place, and afterward thrust a heavy rifle in the saddle’s scabbard. The saloon man stood quite placidly as Ben Galt came alongside him and relieved him of his gun. Only when Galt took him by the arm and started leading him toward the fire did he recover from his chagrin enough to jerk his arm free and growl: “I can walk by myself.”

  He went to the fire and resignedly watched Pleasants climb astride his roan. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t.

  Ready to ride, Pleasants said: “Better keep him around till I get back.” Then he reined away and up the draw.

  Lute Pleasants hadn’t yet decided exactly what he was going to do for the rest of the night, except that he did know he wasn’t going to ride straight home. First of all he felt the need of putting distance between him and the fence camp. He wanted to rid himself of the bad taste left by as deep a humiliation as he had ever suffered. For he and his crew had been caught completely flat-footed by those two rifles on the ridge.

  His own rifle—the .45-75 he now carried on his saddle—had been leaning against the trunk of a pine barely thirty feet out from the fire, and he hadn’t dared expose himself by running to get it. His men likewise hadn’t relished making a dash to the tent for their weapons. So they had taken a thorough bullet whipping, and the tent and their supplies were gone.

  Try as he would, Pleasants couldn’t put down the conviction that Frank Rivers had been one of the two men on the ridge above the draw. Perhaps, he was thinking, Rivers might even have been the man he’d surprised down there at the corral. He was certain that the shooting up of his camp had not only been Rivers’s way of evening the score for the beating his crew had given Fred Bond last evening but also a clever means of keeping him from interfering with the moving out of Anchor’s herd.

  It rankled deeply to think that Rivers had outwitted him, that he might have been spared the humiliation of lying there behind the windfall and watching his camp being shot to pieces, then set afire, had he only left the draw a few minutes earlier. If he’d had only a five-minute leeway, or even a two-minute one, things might have turned out far differently.

  Gradually, as the minutes passed and the roan carried him on south between the moonlit hills, he managed to stop thinking of all that had gone wrong and to wonder how best he could use the remainder of the night. He disliked wasting this unlooked-for luck of having had a horse walk straight into his camp. Crowe’s arrival had, after all, in some small measure soothed the frustration and helplessness that had gripped him over the past four hours.

  He was superstitious enough to believe in luck. And, now that he’d had this bit of good to outweigh the bad of earlier, he tried to tell himself that perhaps things weren’t as bad as they seemed.

  In addition to having heard the sound of cattle in the distance back there after the two rifles on the ridge had gone silent, he now had Crowe’s word for it that Anchor’s herd was probably already on its way down the pass road. And, grudgingly, he had to face the fact that after his weeks of careful planning there was little or nothing he could do to stop Fred and Kate from driving their cattle straight down to the railroad.

  Thinking ahead, he finally began to rationalize that it would be a fairly easy matter to pay Crowe the money to heal the man’s injured pride and persuade him to finish the fence that would wire Anchor off in the hills. For the moment he had lost the advantage in his months-long gamble of humbling the Bonds. But there remained the matter of Owl Creek running low next spring and summer, of the new fences slowly strangling Anchor. He was, he convinced himself, perfectly content to wait another year if need be to see the final ruin of the brand.

  That decided, he felt considerably better. And when he shortly cut the Summit track, sheer curiosity took him along it. Reaching the pass road at the end of another half hour, he took out his watch to see that it was just ten minutes short of three o’clock in the morning He headed down the road, taking his time, even almost beginning to enjoy the night.

  Some time later he was roused from a light doze by hearing the bawling of cattle sounding f
rom close ahead. He left the road immediately, circling through the low hills until, from behind the concealment of a rocky hogback flanking the road, the moonlight let him see the drag of Anchor’s shipping herd lined out along the track and moving steadily down toward the low country.

  “Better make the best of it,” he muttered softly, dryly, before he went on.

  He rode into Ute Springs with the coming dawn, with the light strong enough to let him read the time by the courthouse clock: 4:20.

  A faint surprise lifted in him at seeing lamplight glowing in the windows of the restaurant two doors below the hotel, though, as he turned in at the rail there, he understood the reason for the place being open as he remembered having noticed men working at the loading pens along the narrow-gauge siding above town some minutes ago.

  On entering the restaurant he found the place empty except for Lou White, the owner. He took a stool at the counter and ordered steak and potatoes, and coffee right away.

  White promptly brought him a steaming cup of coffee. “Sure been a busy night.”

  “Yeah?” Pleasants remarked sleepily, yawning.

  “Three freights they loaded. The crews come in about midnight to eat. Then the Baldrock stage hit town late and I had four meals to get in a rush. And just now along comes Jim Echols and that bird that was with poor Cauble when he cashed in. Man, if business keeps up like this, I’m going to be missin’.…”

  “Who? Who was with Echols?” Pleasants cut in, all at once wide awake.

  “That man Rivers. The one.…”

  “Oh, Rivers.” Pleasants didn’t let the other finish in his eagerness to learn more, to find out why Rivers wasn’t helping Anchor’s crew work its herd. “What would those two be doing, prowling around this time of night?”

  “Search me. But Jim looked solemn as a judge. I come right out and asked him why he was night owlin’. All he’d say was that he wouldn’t know till he’d made a seven-mile ride, that maybe he was wastin’ his time.” The restaurant man turned away. “Didn’t make much sense to me.”