Dead Man's Ranch

by Ralph Compton

“What?” Middleton sat up straight. “Surely you’re pulling my leg.”

  “No, sir. I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t a fibber about land. Take my word for it, this here is Dancing M land.”

  They were silent a moment more while Brian Middleton looked around himself with renewed interest. “Then why were you out here?”

  Junior narrowed his eyes and said slowly, “Because I came from over there.” He thrust a finger eastward. “Other side of the town road yonder is Driving D land. D, owned by Grindle, and I’m a Grindle.”

  “Oh,” said Middleton. “I see.”

  “Aw, I didn’t mean to bristle, but land is everything out here. Course, you know that or you wouldn’t be out here, am I right?”

  “Actually, I’m not at all certain anymore what I am doing here. My grandfather, back East, in Providence, that’s in Rhode Island…”

  Junior smiled, said nothing, knowing full well where Providence was, and Rhode Island too.

  Middleton continued. “My grandfather told me this was a fool’s errand, but for some reason I felt it incumbent on me to return to this place of my birth, to see it for myself…before I sell it off to the highest bidder.” He swallowed the last of his whiskey and set the tin cup on a nearby rock. It made a hollow noise.

  Junior turned away, his heart hammering in his rib cage, a bold little smile tugging at his mouth corners. Here was the opportunity he needed, practically in his hands. He dug out his small skillet and gripped it tight to quell the shake of excitement in his hands. “Middleton….”

  The tall man looked up, eyebrows raised. He almost looks happy, thought Junior. And he’s definitely relaxed. Must be the booze.

  “How’d you like to get to the meat of the matter right now?” Junior swallowed, tried to sound casual as he sliced strips of bacon into the pan.

  “What do you mean?”

  Junior prodded the sizzling bacon with his knife, dumped in a splash of hot coffee, and wiped his knife tip on his pants leg. “Well, what I mean is…I’m what you might call my father’s estate agent. And I’ve been told to go ahead and make certain land purchases that will help us to keep this land as ranch land, if you follow me.”

  Middleton just stared at Junior, so the younger man pressed his point. “I am prepared to make you an offer of purchase on the Dancing M property. Right now. Then we can make it all legal and such in town.” He nodded behind them to the north. “Tomorrow, in Turnbull.”

  He’s thinking, thought Junior. Thinking of how much money he should ask for it all, kit and kaboodle.

  Middleton regarded him, then smiled. “I think it would be best if I didn’t rush into anything. I’ve only just arrived.”

  Junior couldn’t help his frustration. This was not the way to go about the deal. He’d rushed into it and blown it from the get-go. Heat rose up his neck and reddened his cheeks, his ears, and he knew Middleton was still watching him.

  “I’ve only just arrived,” repeated the big man, though in a softer tone. “You understand.”

  Junior nodded, kept his head down as he heated a couple of Mica’s split biscuits he’d brought from the cook shack. He maintained his silence as he divided the food and poured fresh coffee for both of them. He glugged a liberal dose of whiskey into his coffee and set the bottle down in the dirt.

  “I tell you what, Grindle.” Middleton ran a thumb across his lips. “Once I’ve seen what I’m facing here, I’m sure I’ll still want to divest myself of this property. Send your father to find me in a day or so and we might be able to come to an agreement.”

  Junior looked at Brian Middleton for the first time since he’d bumbled his offer long minutes before. A dark knot of anger wrenched tight in his gut and he felt his vision blur with the force of it. So, after all, he was nothing more than a kid to this man too. And he not much older than me, thought Junior. He swallowed back the bile he felt rising in his gorge, and a crude plan wormed its way into his brain. If he couldn’t make this work without dear old Father’s help, then he’d by God make it work some other way, come hell or high water.

  He poured himself another slug and, forcing a kid’s half grin, nodded. “Okay with me.” He poured whiskey in Brian’s cup and said, “Let’s drink to it, then.”

  They both raised their cups and clunked them together. Brian leaned back, thoughts forming in the heady whiskey vapors curling about his brain. Junior felt much the same way, though for very different reasons.

  The sun was but a low ripple of light from the east when Junior rose. He intended to leave the stranger sleeping and head for home. He didn’t like to leave the fool of a city boy out there alone, but he’d take care to point him in the right direction. There was no way Junior was going to wait—he had to get back and report to his father. If what the stranger said was true, the old man would have no worries. It was all coming to them. This Brian Middleton just wanted to sell up and get back East. (Though if this big goober was Rory’s son, why didn’t he call himself MacMawe anyway? Junior had to admit, it was not a little troubling.) And that sounded as if it would dovetail with Wilf Grindle’s plans very nicely indeed.

  Junior swung into the saddle, oddly anxious to see his father’s face when he told him that Rory MacMawe’s long-gone son had indeed returned home. He also had a sneaking hunch that, despite their chat in his father’s study yesterday, even if the old man didn’t doubt Junior’s commitment to owning the Dancing M, Junior knew what his father would do—he’d pay a visit to Esperanza. That would ruin everything. He wanted to be the one to work the deal. That would surprise his father—and impress him.

  But he didn’t doubt that Wilf had visited Espy, or would soon. That’d be just like the old man—always have a backdoor plan. It was an admirable trait, but it annoyed the heck out of Junior too. It felt as if he would never be trusted by his father. And that thought made Junior nudge Spunk into a gallop. What if the old man tipped her off that he suspected Rory’s first son was back? Nah, he wouldn’t do that. That would ruin everything, including his chances for owning the Dancing M, and for proving to his father just what sort of a rancher, and more to the point, what sort of a man, was his son. Still, he couldn’t take the chance. He had to get there, and quick.

  Junior had ridden for a few minutes more when he reined up and looked back, squinting to see sign of smoke from the cook fire he’d kindled before he left. If the big fella wasn’t too deep of a sleeper, he thought, then he’d awaken just about when the coffee was ready. But that was the most he could do for him.

  “I’m holding you to it, Middleton. One way or another I’m going to have your land.” Junior reined Spunk toward home, worry over his father’s probable impatience gnawing at him. But the idea that had sparked in him when Callie had found him writing in their father’s study, if it worked, would prove to the old man that Junior was more of a man than he’d reckoned. And it might just guarantee them the land his father so wanted.

  Chapter 18

  “I’m sorry I’ve not been over in a few days, Espy. What with errands in town for Papa, helping Mica with the cooking.” Callie Grindle slipped out of her riding jacket and hung it on a chair back. “I promise I’ll be over more often.”

  Esperanza Soles set the stove lid back in place with a clunk. “It does not matter. We will not be staying here.”

  Callie tilted her head as if she hadn’t heard correctly. “What? Espy, you’re not serious.” She looked at her older friend and saw no sign of humor on the unreadable face. “But why, Espy? This is your home.”

  The squat older woman paused in sweeping the crumbs from her cutting board, opened her mouth to speak, but didn’t. She resumed brushing the board, but did not meet her friend’s gaze. “I have never understood why you come here and bother me. We are from two different worlds and people from yours will never understand a life like mine. Never. I have nothing and I want nothing from you or your kind.”

  Callie’s face reddened as if she’d been slapped. She gritted her teeth to keep from gaspi
ng. “Esperanza, I don’t know what has happened, but I refuse to believe that is really how you feel. We’ve known each other for a long time. Years. In so many ways you’ve been like a mother to me.”

  The older woman kept her broad back to the young girl and continued to scrub hard at the worn wood of the cutting board. She said nothing.

  For a few moments, no sound could be heard in the small kitchen. Callie looked at the tidy room, the oilcloth-covered table, stained but clean, the fresh-swept wooden floor, the clean glass windowpanes, and the unyielding long view of plain and mountains in the far distance.

  “I’m leaving now, Espy. I guess I won’t be back.” Callie looked one last time at her friend and as the tears slipped down her face she set the dish towel on the table and walked out. Her horse still stood at the hitch rail, one foot canted in rest. As Callie galloped back the way she had come, back toward her own life at the Driving D, she felt hollowed, her life less sweet now that it would no longer have Espy in it. But why?

  Back in the little house at the Dancing M, Esperanza paused in her work and listened as the sound of hoofbeats receded into the distance. She stopped scrubbing the counter and for the first time in a long while she let tears well up in her eyes. Knowing it was the way it had to be didn’t mean it did not hurt. In its own way it was as painful as losing Rory, her big bear of a man.

  Without him, her world here in this settlement of whites would no longer be her home. Nor would her son be welcome here. Though they had lived here his entire life, though he was born here, and though his father was one of the founders of the town—and one of the biggest landowners—she knew, after seeing the hatred and greed in the eyes of Wilf Grindle when he had visited earlier in the day, that it would be useless to fight him for Rory’s beloved land.

  The whites had their own way of behaving, making the future the most important thing in their lives, placing far more importance on it than on making sure their neighbors and friends were well cared for and happy. She knew that there were whites, some her friends, who disproved this idea, but at the moment she didn’t care.

  “Gringos!” She spat the word. She hadn’t used it in many years and she didn’t like the way it tasted in her mouth.

  Esperanza turned to the little room where she had cooked and fed her family for close to twenty years. She thought of all the good times she and her son and husband had shared in this room, the laughter within these walls, and she wished her son was there with her instead of drinking himself to death in Turnbull. What would Rory think of him now?

  For a time, when Brandon was a baby, Espy had begun to think Rory might get over the loss of his first son and accept Brandon as everything he had ever wanted in a boy, but had lost. In time, it had proved to be impossible. Brandon was not like other children, “not all there,” as that little town bum, Squirly Ross, had once said to her when she’d gone to town with Rory years ago to shop. She had not told Rory, for she knew he would have beaten the little smelly drunk to death. But she knew he spoke the truth, as much as it pained her to hear it. In time, Espy admitted that Brandon was never going to be the sort of son who takes over a ranch, who does anything more than smile and sing and help with chores about the place. He was not stupid, but he was different from other people.

  Rory loved the boy, though as one might grow fond of a favorite dog. “He’s an innocent,” Rory would say, calling up one of the gentle words they’d used where he came from, far away and years before.

  She knew Rory liked to tip the jug himself now and again, but never too much. Brandon, though, he was different. Since his father died the boy was beyond her control. He had developed a thirst that would never be slaked. The very day Rory finally gave in to the disease that the visiting doctor had said would kill him, Brandon and she had had a fight. He had taken a drink from his father’s whiskey crock. She had said nothing, figuring he was grieving. Then he took another and another.

  She had tried to take the vessel from him, but he’d snatched it back from her grasp, pushing her at the same time. She struck him then, across the face, and saw the anger and hurt and dented pride staring back at her. All these things that she knew so well in her husband, she now saw on her young son’s tensed, trembling, flushed features. He wasn’t old enough yet to grow proper whiskers, but he was drinking like a man. And later that day, she had found him hunched up sick in a corner of the barn. She tried to help him but he pushed her away again. And that’s how it had been ever since Rory’s death weeks before.

  The boy was a lost soul seeking solace in a bottle. He’d been good about saving his money, saving the wages Rory had paid him, and now it was all going for whiskey. She had hoped that someone in Turnbull would refuse to sell him the alcohol, grow tired of his drunken ways, or perhaps he would run out of money and have to return home to her for good. Or better yet, that he would realize how foolish he’d been and come back to her.

  Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that they would have to leave the ranch. For then Brandon would be forced to come with her, and that might be enough of a shock to pull his head out of the bottle. Maybe, but what if he didn’t follow her? What if this time her troubled “innocent” boy said no?

  It all made her so angry. They had more right than anyone else in the world to live and be happy at the Dancing M. Her gaze fell on the deep brown wood and gentle curves of the mantel clock. She’d not wound it since Rory died. It had been his task. Every other morning he would take the key from underneath it and crank it a dozen times. But no more. She would leave that clock when she left the ranch.

  It would happen soon, she thought, as she stepped outside and into the bright morning sun. Yes, it would happen soon…but not today.

  Chapter 19

  Teasdale, the station agent, folded the newspaper into his lap and looked over the ends of his polished boots, where they sat, heel-to-toe propped on his desktop in the station house. “I hear you straight, Squirly? You want an advance on your pay?”

  The little begrimed man nodded. “That’s about it, Teas. I reckon I’ve proved up around this place, come to the point so you depend on me for luggin’ and haulin’ and whatnot. What do you say?”

  “Why, Squirly, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you have just about milked dry all the favors a man can find in this little town. You must really be desperate for a drink to expect me to pay you for work you might do one day.”

  “No, no, you got it all wrong, Teas. I don’t want a drink. Well, leastwise not with this here money. Truth is, I need to rent a nag from Silver Haskell. Got a mission I have to take care of. Take me a day or two. He won’t let me muck out stalls, nor do a thing for him. Says I’d be bad for business.” He snorted and shook his head. “I can’t imagine a business that could be worse off than his.”

  Teasdale dropped his feet to the floor. “What would you need with a mount, Squirly? I don’t think you can render a horse, even one of Haskell’s old glue pots, down enough to ferment it.”

  “Never mind, then, Teasdale. I reckon I can figure it out without your help.” Squirly turned and clumped out of the office and on down the porch.

  By the time he reached the stairs, he heard a voice behind him say, “All right, Squirly Ross. So help me, but you look sincere as all get out. Don’t play me false, will you? Tell you what, I’ll go down to Silver’s with you and pay the man myself for your rental horse.”

  “Why, that’s a kick to the head, Teas. You really don’t trust me, is that it?”

  “Well, Squirly, that’s just about it, yes. Shouldn’t surprise you any. You’ve played the snatch-and-run game with everyone in town.”

  The drunk nodded. “I reckon I have at that.”

  “When did you want to head out?”

  “No time like the present, as someone once said.”

  Teasdale sighed. “Okay, just let me lock up. And, Squirly?”

  “Yeah?”

  “When you’re out and about on your secret mission, might be you’ll pass by a stream?”
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  “It’s possible. Why?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt anybody’s feelings if you were to shuck those buckskins and soap up. I’ll spring for a bar of soap over to Gleason’s store….” Teasdale leaned forward in the doorway, waiting on the man’s answer, a half smile on his face.

  “Seems to me you’d be embarrassed, asking a question like that, Teas.”

  “Not half as much as you think. With a sweet stink like yours, we’re way past the blushing stage, Squirly.”

  The little portly man scratched his whiskered chin. “Tell you what, Teas. Since you’re so all-fired worked up to shine me up, just toss me the price of the soap and I’ll see to it that my honest, working-man’s smells don’t offend your senses.”

  Teasdale shook his head. “No, I guess we’ll let it stand as it is, Squirly Ross.”

  All the way down to the livery, Squirly complained louder and louder until they reached the stable, then stood by, oddly silent, while Teasdale worked to convince Silver Haskell to rent a nag to Squirly—saddle included.

  Chapter 20

  Brian Middleton couldn’t remember ever feeling so awful. Even the train he’d ridden for the first leg of his trip out West, while unbearable, had been easier to take than this. He lay still, fully awake but unwilling to open his eyes to the harsh truth and even harsher sunlight already pushing down with an intensity he found nauseating. Then he remembered the stranger—what was his name? Junior…Junior Grindle. Brother of that rude young woman in town.

  The sharp tang of wood smoke reached his nose and prompted him to rise on one elbow and slowly open his eyes. The sun stung and forced him to keep his lids lowered. A small fire glowed, and there was the man’s coffeepot, a tin cup, and a canteen, resting by the fire as if waiting for him. He grunted upright and looked around as he stretched his big frame. No sign of the other man, nor his horse. His own horse, he noted, hadn’t wandered all that far and was busy nosing a seemingly unforgiving spiny shrub. How appropriate, he thought.