The Negro walked forward, the rifle leveled.
The white man also started forward. He didn’t hold a gun. Bob felt the girl’s eyes on him. He felt abashed and this made him angry. He didn’t have any reason to be abashed. These folk were on his range and they didn’t have any right to be there.
He halted his horse and said: ‘Howdy, folks.’
The Negro halted and watched him with unfriendly eyes. The white man walked past him and came close to Bob.
‘Howdy,’ he said. His voice and his face were neutral. This wasn’t a hasty man. He looked past Bob at something behind him. The cowhand turned in the saddle and was startled to find that the other white man had come up behind him. He didn’t hold a weapon in his hand, but one lay in its holster at his side.
These folk were sure ready for trouble.
If they stayed here, they’d get plenty.
‘Bob Dickson,’ he said. He touched his hat to the woman and the girl. He knew his manners.
‘I’m Will Storm,’ the neutral man said. This here’s my wife. That’s my daughter. My brother, Martin. Yonder’s Joe Widbee.’
Bob ignored the Negro. He always ignored Negroes. He came of a poor white family and he couldn’t abide blacks. This Negro didn’t seem to mind much. He looked as if he would as soon shoot Bob as look at him,
‘Light an’ set,’ Will Storm invited.
Bob hesitated. He didn’t want to get social with these folks. Pretty soon he would be moving them on. But he hungered for human company and there was the girl.
He stepped down from the saddle and Mrs. Storm offered him coffee. The Negro put up his rifle and they gathered around the fire and drank coffee. Mrs. Storm invited him to eat, but he said no thanks, ma’am, it was mighty kind of her, but he had to get on. He had to get on and tell Charlie Dwyer, Charlie would want to take swift action to move them on. Dwyer looked after Ed Brack’s interests. He looked after them better maybe than Big Ed knew how to look after his own.
He tried not to look at the girl, but he couldn’t help himself. She looked good at a distance, but close up she took his breath clean away. It wasn’t fair on a man. And the girl knew it. She knew just what she was doing to him. It was downright cruel.
The little girl came and stood near Bob, gazing at him out of wide eyes, not saying anything. She didn’t take her gaze from him all the time he was there and he found it disconcerting.
They talked of this and that. Will Storm wanted to know all he could learn about the country. Bob told him. He was an open man and he liked to talk. And he wanted to impress the girl that he was a man among men.
Broken Spur, he told them pointedly, claimed all this range. They’d had a piece of trouble with some Utes from the north in the spring. The Indians had been after horses. The hands had shot a buck and that had been that. They wouldn’t be troubled again. Some Arapahoes had drifted into the country during the summer, but they didn’t give Broken Spur any trouble. They had been a shiftless bunch without much fight in them. They begged mostly and it looked like they were on their way to Denver to try some begging around there. They were after the white man’s leavings.
Will heard the name Ed Brack and he knew it. He glanced across at Mart and knew that his brother knew it too. Neither of them said much just dropped a question here and there, getting all the information they could. They didn’t tell the stranger a thing. He didn’t seem to want to know much. Will reckoned he could see all he wanted to know. They were building a house and that meant they were going to stay.
Finally, it was time for Bob to go. He thanked them nicely for their hospitality, tried for a smile from Kate and got it. It made him blush and he fumbled a mite as he reached his horse and stepped into the saddle. He rode slowly off along the valley going north, his mind confused, not able to think of much of anything but the girl. Once he stopped and looked back, hoping for a last sight of her. But she had disappeared. The men were back at their logging.
Charlie would take the men down there, drive them out and most likely burn down as much of the house as they built. Uneasiness stirred in Bob. He hated the idea of using the girl’s folks that way. He hated the idea of her going out of the country. The best he could do, he decided, was to somehow keep out of the party that evicted them. He didn’t want any part of it.
He felt pretty troubled as he rode back to headquarters. He reached it towards the tail-end of the afternoon.
The outfit hadn’t been there a full year, but already Charlie had proved that there was a competent man in charge. Cattlemen hated to do much more than ride, but somehow he had made the hands use axes and hammers. Where two of the creeks almost met in the valley to the north of the valley in which the Storms had stopped, Charlie had thrown up a stout cabin for his own use. Near it stood the bunkhouse for the men. Charlie was very much the boss. He would do anything the men did, he would work and labor, but he held himself apart from them. Charlie had ambitions. Back there in Texas on Brack’s main ranch he had been a top-hand. Now at thirty he was foreman in sole charge of the operations in Colorado. The men said he modeled himself on Ed Brack. Others went further and said that one day, even pretty soon, he would make himself a bigger man even than Brack. He ran a few of his own cows in with Brack’s and the men said, smiling sideways, that the day would come soon when some of Brack’s calves would bear Charlie’s brand. It had been done before and it could be done again.
Bob dismounted by the corral south of the house and turned his pony out. Charlie Dwyer was standing in front of the house watching him, as though he knew that Bob had something to tell him and was waiting for him. There was something uncanny about Charlie. He seemed to sense things even before most men knew them.
As Bob walked towards him, he knew that he was more than a little afraid of the foreman. Not that for the time and place that Charlie was any more violent than other men. Sure, he had stretched the neck of a cow-thief a few days back without so much as batting an eyelid. But in Bob’s book any sensible man would have done the same thing. No, it was something about Charlie, the way he looked at you, smiling, that held a special menace. Just as if a man meant no more to him than a cow or a rail-post.
He looked out for the men who worked for him. He saw that they had the rough comforts that the country could provide, he saw that they ate well, but you had the feeling that he cared for them because a profit could be made out of them if he kept them at their best. He looked out for them in the same way he would look out for a cow. One day he could sell it for beef. Which was only natural, Bob supposed. That was one of the facts of life. But he had the feeling that men were dispensable to Charlie.
In appearance Charlie Dwyer was tall. His mouth smiled, but the smile could never erase the cold watchfulness of the eyes. He was hard and fit without a spare ounce of fat on his body. Women maybe would think he was good to look at. Men followed him and obeyed him, they relied on him, because he was strong. But it was doubtful if they could ever like him.
Charlie knew now that Bob had something to tell him. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be here. He was supposed to be watching cows up on the high graze.
‘Well?’ he asked.
Bob wished he could put it off, because he was still thinking of the girl. But he said: ‘There’s folks down on Three Cricks.’
Dwyer raised his eyebrows. He stayed calm. Bob might have known it. He always stayed calm.
‘You get a good look at ’em?’
‘Sure. I passed the time of day.’
‘You visited, huh?’
Bob nodded. He’d show Charlie he was a pretty smart fellow.
‘Rid in and talked. Right sociable.’
‘What kind of folks? How many?’
‘Texas folk like us. Couple white men, a Negra. A woman, a girl an’ a kid.’
Charlie smiled.
‘Don’t sound like no army,’ he said.
‘They aim to stay. Buildin’ a cabin.’
‘Any cows?’
‘No, sir. Just a few
hosses. Them two men, boss, they looked like they could handle themselves.’ Bob was remembering the Negro, but he thought he would shame himself a little if he showed he thought he was dangerous. Negroes weren’t allowed to be dangerous. They did as they were told.
‘You goin’ to move ’em on, Charlie?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Dwyer said.
Bob was surprised.
‘You mean―’ he began.
‘Not yet.’
‘But they’ll git settled in. Then―’
‘They’ll build us a cabin,’ Dwyer said. ‘We’re goin’ to need a cabin down thataway. They ain’t seen a winter in this country yet. Maybe that’ll change their minds. Women an’ kids along. Come spring, if the country ain’t moved ’em on, we will.’
Bob was lost in admiration for the man. He could see why Charlie Dwyer ran the outfit and he was no more than a hired man. Then he thought of the girl and his admiration was not so strong. But maybe the winter would move them on.
‘I’ll get back to the cows,’ he said and turned away.
Dwyer watched him go. He stood thinking about the folks who had been foolish enough to stray into the southern valley. He felt the winter would do the trick for him. But maybe he should ride over and have a word with them. When they heard who Broken Spur belonged to, maybe that would move them. Ed Brack had a reputation. He was a big man and folks were impressed by his name. Dwyer was undecided.
But on the following day, he was riding the southern limit of the valley in which his headquarters stood when he thought about the squatters and on the spur of the moment decided to go and take a look at them. He might even have a word.
He rode through the deep timber over the ridge that separated the two valleys and made his way along the western wall knowing that he would have good cover all the way down to the creeks.
After a while, through a break in the trees, he spotted the smoke of a fire below him and headed down, not hurrying and making as little noise as he could because he wanted to take a close look before he went in.
He was nearly down on the flat when a voice called out behind him—
‘Pull up.’
He halted.
He wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t a fool either. A man who used that tone held a gun. If he didn’t, he was asking for trouble.: So Dwyer halted and folded his hands patiently on the saddle-horn.
A man walked up close behind his horse and past him.
Dwyer’s eyes narrowed and he felt the anger rise in him.
The man was a Negro. Where Dwyer came from Negroes didn’t hold guns on white men. Not if they knew what was good for them, they didn’t.
The Negro halted, his rifle pointing straight at Dwyer’s belly. He looked at the white man with lugubrious eyes as if he felt sad for him.
‘Who’re you?’ he asked.
Dwyer could see that this was no run of the mill coon. The eyes were intelligent, watchful. There was a quality about the man that Dwyer recognized. The man was dangerous.
‘The name’s Dwyer,’ the mounted man said civilly enough. ‘I ramrod the Broken Spur. Who’re you?’
The black lids seemed to cover the whites of the eyes for a brief moment.
‘Joe Widbee.’
Dwyer stiffened. He wouldn’t have been a Texan if he hadn’t heard of Joe Widbee. He had been right to be civil. That fool Dickson had been unaware. Dwyer was curious about the outfit that had Widbee on its payroll. He was seriously troubled now. An outfit that came into this country with a member like this ...
‘I came to talk to your boss, Widbee. Just bein’ neighborly.’
‘Sure,’ said the Negro. ‘Any of your boys around?’
‘No.’
‘Go right ahead and be neighborly.’
Dwyer walked his horse forward and he heard the Negro following him. He went about a hundred yards through the trees and came out on to the open valley floor through the axed stumps of trees. Beyond was the start of a house. Logs were strewn here ready for use; rocks from the creek bed for the chimney. Two men were swinging axes, notching logs. Beyond them was a fire at which a woman in a sun-bonnet worked. She straightened when she heard his horse and turned to watch him. The men stopped work and eyed him.
Then he saw the girl. Dickson hadn’t remarked about the girl. That was devious of the boy. She was standing with her hands on her hips, staring at him with open curiosity. Dwyer hadn’t seen such a woman in a long time. He doubted if he had ever seen such a woman. He felt the pulse in his temple beating. That was a sure sign. Suddenly, the whole situation changed.
The two men with the axes in their hands were walking towards him. The smaller of the men stopped and said civilly enough, but in a neutral voice: ‘Howdy.’
Dwyer returned the greeting and looked past him to the taller man. He knew he’d seen him some place before. For the moment he couldn’t place him.
‘I’m Will Storm,’ the smaller man said.
‘Charlie Dwyer.’
‘Light.’
Dwyer thanked him and dismounted. He was introduced to the taller man. Martin Storm. Then he knew him. Joe Widbee and Mart Storm in one outfit. That painted a different picture. Ed Brack wasn’t going to like this. He wasn’t going to like this at all.
‘That’s Joe Widbee behind you.’
‘We met,’ Dwyer said in a flat tone.
He was introduced to Mrs. Storm, to the child, Melissa, and last to the girl, Kate. Dwyer didn’t let his gaze dwell on Kate. He didn’t dare or he would have given himself away. He was courteous, no more. The girl had got to him, damn her. It was being out in this accursed wilderness for so long. It had to be. Even an Indian squaw looked beautiful to him now.
They walked to the fire. He was invited to eat and accepted. The men downed tools and they sat around while Mrs. Storm served them a stew of the kind Dwyer hadn’t tasted in years. He spoke his appreciation, showing feeling in the only way he knew how, by play-acting it. The girl, Kate, watched him openly curious. It was disconcerting when he wanted to be watching her. But he didn’t give himself away for a moment. For Mart and Will Storm were watching him. They didn’t come to the point, but he knew they wanted all the information they could get from him.
He acted a spurious openness. He was playing the frank, friendly man. He worked for Broken Spur. He took Ed Brack’s pay and therefore had perforce to be loyal to him. A man had no alternative. It was a value they understood.
‘I’ll be quite frank with you, Mr. Storm,’ he said when he had finished the excellent meal and they sat smoking and sipping coffee. ‘There’s no point in being anything else. Mr. Brack claims this valley. Come winter his cows’ll be all over. It’s just not possible for you to build here.’
He expected indignation or anger, even frustrated fury, at least on the part of Will Storm. The man didn’t look like a fighter to him. There was a soft mildness about him that Dwyer despised. He spoke gently, there was no drive to his voice. There seemed to be not a flicker of fire in his belly. He couldn’t see why men like Mart Storm and Joe Widbee looked to him for leadership.
‘That’s a real pity,’ Will said gently and with real regret in his voice. The girl, Kate, started to say something in protest, but her father waved her to silence. ‘We really like this place, Mr. Dwyer. We aimed to stay here.’
‘You’ll pardon me savin’ so, sir,’ Dwyer said smoothly, ‘but there’s no sense in it. Your party’s too weak. This is Indian country. You’ll get huntin’ parties through here when winter sets in. They ain’t peaceable. Not by any means. The hills’re full of lawless men. I was thinkin’ of the ladies. You’d do a sight better nearer in to Denver. There’s law an’ order up that way.’
‘Not to mention the fact,’ Will said with a grave face, ‘that there’s no Ed Brack up that way.’
‘You could say that. I’m only tryin’ to help, to save you and the ladies a whole lot of grief. Come winter Mr. Brack’s cows’ll be all over this valley. It’s his winter range. He ain’t goin’ to
take at all kindly to you bein’ here.’
‘And have you thought, Mr. Dwyer,’ Will said in that gentle voice of his, ‘that we might not take kindly to Brack bein’ here?’
It was said so quietly that Dwyer didn’t see it right off for the open challenge that it was.
He looked around at the faces of the other men.
The Negro was standing right behind Will Storm still with his rifle in his hands. He hadn’t taken his eyes from Dwyer all the time the talk went on.
Mart Storm was grinning openly. The grin was insolent and Dwyer had a terrible impulse to knock it off his face.
He caught himself. He allowed a deep regret to show on his face.
‘I feel real bad about this,’ he said. ‘I mean ... I can see you’re real nice folks. See here, Mr. Storm, I’m askin’ you - move a few miles. Just go over the ridge into the next valley. There ain’t no difference. There’s all the grass in the world.’
Mart Storm said: ‘We like it here, Dwyer.’
Dwyer swallowed. Anger came very near the surface. Maybe it was only the presence of the girl that stopped him from bursting out in anger.
‘Mr. Brack,’ he said, ‘is a pretty big man.’
‘Sure,’ Mart said, ‘I know Eddie Brack.’ He didn’t need to say any more than that. It showed what he thought of the man. Dwyer stiffened perceptibly at the tone. Then Mart added: ‘An’ he knows me.’
Dwyer rose to his feet.
‘I reckon I’m not doin’ any good here,’ he said. ‘A great pity. I must say I’m surprised at you, Mr. Storm, putting your womenfolk in danger this way.’
Will and Mart also rose.
‘Do I understand,’ Will said, ‘that you’d threaten women?’ Dwyer looked at the toe of his right boot.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m just a hired man. I have your interest at heart. It’s just that Mr. Brack’s a man that likes his own way.’
He turned and walked to his horse. Then he remembered his manners, thanked Mrs. Storm for her hospitality and bowed to Kate. Mart Storm walked over to him. They met almost toe to toe. Dwyer could feel the aggressive iron in the man.
Riders West Page 3
