Dead Man's Ranch

by Ralph Compton

  The midday sun baked down, and, having no other headgear, he picked up the flattened felt and beat the dust from it too, then rammed an ample fist into it. By now it looked more like a concertina than a derby, but he set it on his thatch of wiry red hair and pulled down on both sides of the brim. It would stay put now, by gum, or he wasn’t Brian J. Middleton. Within seconds he felt it working its way back upward. He took in a deep breath, placed one large hand atop the derby, snatched the horse’s reins with the other, and led the now-docile beast in the direction he’d been headed originally, southward out of town.

  Once we’re past those trees and over that little rise, I’ll give this beast another go. He looked at the horse. “Apparently, we have a fair distance to travel yet today. I don’t fancy spending all of it leading you. Now, you may have been some sort of joke of a horse and Haskell, that thief, may very well be laughing away in front of a crowd at the saloon at my expense, but I’ll tell you this one time only: I will not be trifled with. I will not put up with these shenanigans. This trip, this town, these people may have been Mr. MacMawe’s preference, but they are not mine. And I will not tolerate any of this. The sooner this distasteful experience is over with, the sooner you can return to your stall and eat whatever it is you indulge in. Do you hear me?”

  The brown horse flicked an ear.

  “Good. That’s settled, then.” And they trudged on past the clump of scrub pines and up over the hill.

  Chapter 10

  “Esperanza! Esperanza Soles! Are you here? Is anyone about the place?” Wilf Grindle shifted in his saddle, his grand palomino gelding, Tiny Boy, fidgeting in the open space between the house and the nearest barn. Wilf looked about him again, taking in the disheartening scene before him. The bunkhouse was shut tight and shuttered, fence rails angled, leaning and unmended on the near chutes, and a rusted corner of tin on the chicken shed bounced and squawked in the light breeze that had kicked up on his way over here.

  It had not been a pleasant ride, what with everything on his mind, all the things he figured he needed to do to ensure that he ended up owner of the Dancing M. And then there were the memories of happier times for all, each curve in the path, each boulder on the familiar road a reminder of the youth and blind optimism each of them had shared so long ago.

  His Carla would expertly handle the reins of the gig, the same one Callie now favored, as they rode of an evening to visit Rory and Penelope, his city girl—though you’d never have known, so adaptable had she been to life on the frontier. Of all of them, Penny had been the one to truly thrive in this place. Unforgiving as the place could be at times, it was easy to tell she had become part of it. He shook his head.

  All that had been a long time ago, back before children and hired help and banknotes and water rights and challenges from new settlers changed everything for them all—and he’d admit that not all of it had been for the better. But back before all that, they’d had each other and the certainties of youth, and that had been enough to see them through Indian attacks, drought, and bone-wearying labor. And then Rory and Penny had the boy, the first baby of their group.

  Like its father, the baby had been born big, larger than a child should be, and Penny was no match for nature’s plans. Left weakened, she died before the child reached a year. Those had been hard times, his Carla trying to help stubborn Rory to raise the boy. But between them all, they had managed to struggle through a couple more years. By then their own children came along and it was too much effort. They’d offered to take the boy in with them, anything to help. But Rory had become hard, as if his old self had been covered with horned wrappings that grew thicker and denser with time.

  He’d brought in Esperanza to help him with the child, with the house, and that seemed to help, but then one day the child was gone. Rory wouldn’t speak of it. They’d only gotten the story from far-off neighbors, from people in the little growing town of Turnbull. They said Rory had met strangers from the East, city folk who didn’t even stay the night. They’d hired their own transport and taken the baby boy away with them.

  It didn’t take long after that for him and Rory to disagree about most everything, even when Wilf admitted he was wrong, or just plain gave in to Rory. Still, it wasn’t enough, and Rory became more difficult than ever to deal with. He never spoke of the child, would walk away if the subject was raised. The final straw came when Carla, herself by then a doting mother, had tried a last desperate plea to get the truth from him, to reason with him. In front of Wilf, Rory had barked at her as if she were an annoying dog, and then raised an arm like a grizzly its paw, as if to strike. They never spoke again after that.

  Wilf had half expected Rory to show up at Carla’s funeral a couple of years later. But the bear of a Scot never did. Wilf shook his head at the memory. And Carla, to her end, regretted not doing more. It broke her heart knowing that Penelope’s baby was sent away with strangers….

  “What is it you want, Mr. Grindle?”

  The voice cracked his thoughts like morning sun rasping through the curtains in his bedroom. A squat Mexican woman stood before him, her eyes and forehead a maze of creases as she squinted up into the morning sun at him. Despite her lined face, he knew she was younger than he. She held the emotionless look so common among Mexicans and Indians of his acquaintance. Again, he wondered if it was only with him that people were cold, as if they’d stepped back and were guarding themselves whenever he was near.

  “Esperanza, it’s good to see you again.”

  She stood regarding him, one hand on her hip, one visoring the sun from her eyes. Her gaze was not hateful, nor was it that of a friend. Her clothing was the most cheerful thing about her, he decided. He’d hand it to the Mexicans; they had a way with color. Though worn, her dress was still rich in hues of brown and yellow, and the apron topping it too was neatly pressed and of the same red-flower print as the kerchief holding back her still mostly black hair.

  He tried again. “It’s been nearly two weeks since the funeral. I wanted to see how you are getting on here, what your plans might be….May I get down?”

  Still she watched him as a curious bird might watch a far-off hawk from the safety of an inner branch. Her head nodded once; then she turned toward the house. He led Tiny Boy to the rail before the house, and noted it was the same simple setup he’d helped Rory build, what was it? Twenty-four, twenty-five years back? He ran his fingers over the rusted steel band holding the end snug. They’d smithed those bands together. And gotten drunk at the same time. He remembered they had been in more danger from Penny’s sharp words than from smacking their hands with the hammer.

  Off to the left, backed up against a shrub-covered boulder, leaned what was left of the forge shop, now mostly a pile of warped boards and broken implements, robbed from for other projects over the years, no doubt.

  “Coffee for you.” A ceramic mug of steaming black coffee was held in his face. She’d caught him at it again, daydreaming of old times when he should have been pressing her with the business at hand. He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Esperanza.”

  Wilf offered a smile, but it didn’t seem to help soften her features. She stood on the steps, blowing on her own cup of coffee. It was obvious she wasn’t going to let him in. No matter, really. It’d been so long he didn’t really want to go in there anyway. But he could see over her shoulder that it was neat as a pin. Plain, but neat. As was the yard and doorstep. On the floor, just inside the door and half in shadow, was a basket of brown eggs. Still warm, he’d bet.

  “Esperanza, I’m curious to know what you’ll be doing. You and your boy, now that Rory’s, well, passed on.”

  “No, Mr. Grindle.”

  He’d been in midsip, awaiting her long-winded reply about how she didn’t know what he meant, what would they do, and then the hot coffee burned his tongue.

  “What?”

  She shook her head and looked to the side, off in the distance, a wide, tight look set on her mouth. She shook her head fast and kept on wi
th it while she talked. “No, Mr. Grindle. I know what you’re after and it’s not right. You will not run me off this place. It is my home. My son’s home. It is ours. Rory told me so. I say no to you.”

  He stared back into her eyes for a few seconds, then said, “Well, I’ll give you this: You come right to a thing, don’t you, little lady?” He had to look away from her. Those dark eyes were like accusations of everything he’d ever done that he regretted. Damn the woman anyway. He dumped the rest of the coffee and shook the last drops from the cup.

  “You’re telling me he left the Dancing M to you all neat and legal? Got a lawyer involved too, did he?”

  That same dark stare met his, but there was something there; he was sure of it. A flicker, maybe, like lightning a hundred miles off on a dark summer night, that told him a crack had opened and he, by God, was the man to drive a wedge in there and widen it, take that boulder apart all by himself. He’d own the Dancing M and make no mistake about it.

  He offered her the cup, handle first. “I thank you, ma’am, for the coffee.” Then he nodded and mounted up, without another look left or right. The past is well and truly dead, Wilf, he told himself. Time for a bright new future. He smiled as he rode away home, toward the Driving D. Time to talk with the boy again, get the lawyers in on this, get the situation in hand once and for all.

  Chapter 11

  “Well, your best bet—heck, your only bet—is the Doubloon Saloon down the street to the right. Can’t miss it.” Harv Peterson leaned on the ledger and winked at the swarthy stranger with the dusty black hat. “You looking to get in on a game of chance, mister?”

  “The thought had occurred to me. Unless the local boys are too afraid to bring me in, that is, huh?” Mort Darturo feathered a thumb along each side of his mustaches.

  For two strokes of the grandfather clock at the base of the staircase, the men stared stone-faced at each other. Then the portly hotelier grinned and smacked the counter. “Now you’re funnin’ me. I get you. No, no, no high rollers hereabouts, but the boys from the Driving D do play a mean hand of stud.”

  “You get in on those games yourself?” Mort Darturo hefted his war bag, adjusted his saddlebags on his shoulder. His coat parted.

  “Not me, no. Mae would never—” Harv paused when he saw the black grips of two pistols, butt-forward in cross-draw fashion, riding low on the stranger’s waist.

  Darturo followed his sight line, nodded at him, and said, “They’re for show. Just like my card game, huh?”

  Harv nodded, not sure if he should smile.

  “Four, you say?”

  “Yessir, room four. Busy week. Matter of fact, it’s the same room I gave to the only other stranger we’ve seen in the last month.”

  “Oh?” Darturo stopped at the end of the counter, tilted his head to the side.

  “Yes, exciting too. Turns out, according to Teasdale anyway, the big stranger who came in on yesterday’s train is the long-lost MacMawe boy. I remember when all that hubbub was going on. What a mess.”

  “What ‘hubbub’ was that?”

  “Oh, must be pretty near twenty years back or so, one of the larger landowners, that’d be MacMawe, he lost his wife. Had a hard time with everything after that. He eventually got himself a Mexican housekeeper, if you know what I mean. But I guess it didn’t matter. Seemed nothing would go right for him. So he sent his boy back East to be raised by rich relations.”

  “And this boy is back? He’s a man now, though, huh?”

  Harv nodded, eyebrows raised. “He’s bigger than his father. And Rory was as big as they come.”

  The stranger walked to the stairs. “Well, it is no never mind to me.”

  “Might be, though,” said Harv.

  Mort smiled, said, “How so?”

  “Well, if you’re looking for work and if you know your nose from your tail end of a cow, then the two biggest ranches in these parts are the Dancing M, that would be the MacMawe place, and the Driving D, Wilf Grindle’s spread. Course, if you’re not looking for work, that’s a different story.”

  The stranger seemed to think about this a moment. “So, this MacMawe is dead now, eh? And his land, it’s good land?”

  “Oh, just about as good as it gets. Toss-up, really, between Driving D and the Dancing M. Both got good minerals, plenty of grazing. But the Dancing M, that’s got the best water rights. Controls the flowage of the feeder streams off the Maligno down that way.”

  Mort nodded as if to himself.

  “Why? You got a hankering to find work out there?”

  “We’ll see, eh?” Mort clumped up the stairs.

  Harv heard the stranger’s boots pause at the top landing, then resume their slow walk toward the rear of the building. He looked down at the ledger, spun it, squinted, and frowned. The man’s signature was a snaking scrawl that said nothing Harv could make out. Lawman? Bounty hunter? Certainly seemed like someone who took in a lot more information than he let out. And that accent…He’d bet his mama’s boots it wasn’t Mexican. So, where was he from? Looked Mexican, sort of dark and smallish, though there was a little bit of a dandy in him too.

  Harv closed the book and wondered if he talked too much. Mae said he did. But then she’d hardly be the one to judge, since he could never get more than two words in before she rode all over his talk like a woman a-horseback.

  He blew out a slow breath through the side of his mouth and looked out the window, then leaned an elbow on the counter and probed his nose with a fingertip.

  “Mining for gold, eh?”

  Harv spun, his finger still occupied. The new guest stood at the counter as if he’d never left. But Harv had seen him ascend the stairs, had heard the door to number 4 open and close. He wiped his finger on his trousers. “I didn’t hear you….”

  Darturo smiled. “Which way to the saloon?”

  “Oh, that way.” Harv jerked a thumb behind him, in the general direction of the north end of the street.

  Darturo nodded, said, “Don’t wait up, eh?” And chuckled as he left.

  Harv watched his shape through the gauzy lace curtains of his front windows, heard the man’s boots clunking the wood boardwalk. The last of the man’s low, throaty laugh seemed to echo in the lobby long after the man left. Harv watched the door and brushed at his nostrils, not liking the coldness rising in him. He had given thought to inspecting the man’s traps, see what was what with him. But now something told him that might not be a good idea.

  Chapter 12

  Mica Bain rapped the long handle of his favorite wooden spoon on the rim of his cast-iron cook pot. “If I have to yell for them to come to dinner one more time…” He paused to listen, then slid the top back over the boiling orange stew. “Ungrateful family, don’t know what they’re missing anyway.” He ambled out of the kitchen and down the carpet in the hall toward Wilf’s office, mumbling and wiping his hands on his smeared apron. “One last time. Then I feed it to the hogs, and I quit. And this time I mean it.”

  He reached up to rap on the door of Wilf’s office, but the raised voices of two men disagreeing within stayed his broad, knuckled hand. Wilf’s spirited, rasping tones reached through the barely open heavy doors. So, one was Wilf; that much Mica was sure of. But the other? There was something familiar to the voice, but he couldn’t place it. Damn this getting old. Used to have hearing like a mountain cat. Now look at me. Reduced to getting right up to a door to listen in. He leaned his head closer to the gap…those clipped tones. No, wasn’t one of Wilf’s rancher friends. Not many of those around anymore anyways. All sellin’ off and movin’ out. Junior? No, he spoke softer. ’Sides, nowadays the boy would be more likely to still be in bed.

  He noticed the familiar sharp blended smells of cherry and pine of Wilf’s cigarillos. He was partial to a flake blend for his pipe himself. Then the second man spoke louder and Mica was shocked—he hadn’t recognized it as Junior’s voice, but it was indeed the boy. He peeked between the nearly closed doors.

  “No,” contin
ued Wilf, leaning against the bookcase behind his desk. “Course, it’s too much to hope for, but the best thing that could happen was if Rory’s two offspring, this newly returned prodigal and the bastard, duked it out and ended up killing each other. Solve a load of problems for us. But that’s pie-in-the-sky thinking and a sure way to attract unwanted trouble. I’ll do this all legal-like and aboveboard, if it kills me.”

  “What about Esperanza?”

  “What about her, Junior? You honestly don’t think that anyone in their right mind would allow that Mexican mother of a drunken half-breed, and a squatting gold digger to boot, to stay around these parts, do you?”

  Mica watched as Wilf smiled and thumbed a match, set flame to a cigarillo, and regarded his son through the drifting fog of blue smoke. He reached a hand into the wooden box on his desk and tossed one to his son. The boy regarded it, smiled, and leaned toward a newly lit match.

  Mica felt his teeth come together hard, his jaw muscles aching with the strain. He wanted to slam open this door and drop Wilf and the boy too, right where they stood. Drawing on their fine cigars and talking as if good, hardworking people, their own neighbors, were nothing more than a few beeves to cut out and kill off. Sacrifices for the good of the herd. He wanted to burst in, find out just what his oldest friend meant by all this.

  This damn sure didn’t sound like the Wilf he’d known all these years. Calling that boy, Brandon, the “bastard”? Everybody in these parts knew who his pappy was. And who was this “prodigal”? Surely he didn’t mean…could it be? Mica stood stunned, staring at the door but not seeing a thing. Rory’s firstborn? Back here? God in heaven…Mica leaned toward the door again.

  It was as if he didn’t know who these people were anymore. Certainly not Wilf, who, to his recollection, had never had anything bad to say about Esperanza. Why the change of heart? And then he knew. As long as Rory was alive, no matter that they hadn’t spoken in years, Wilf wouldn’t dare broach the subject of possessing the Dancing M. But now that Rory’s gone, I’ll bet he’s thought about it plenty over the past few weeks. But what could change his plans enough to account for this nasty new edge he’d not ever seen in Wilf?