Dead Man's Ranch

by Ralph Compton

  Mica stepped forward again, until he was within arm’s reach of the pistol. If the young crazy fool was going to kill him, by God, he was going to go down scrapping. “And what do I get in return? A tongue-lashing from a spoiled, know-it-all boy who will never be a man as long as he spends time sneaking around in the shadows and doing things that hurt other people.”

  He saw that he’d taken the boy by surprise, and as soon as he was within reach, he lashed up with a spadelike backhand. The work-scarred knuckles connected with the young man’s stubbled cheek, snapping Junior’s head backward as if jerked by a string. At the same instant, Mica grabbed the boy’s gun hand by the wrist and squeezed hard. The fingers went limp and the pistol dropped to the straw without a sound.

  The slap to his face did little more than anger Junior, who shook it off as a wet dog shakes off water. Then he growled, lowered his head like a battering ram, and drove himself straight into Mica’s gut. The older man pitched forward, air rushing from him like a flattened bellows, his grip on the young man’s wrist now lost. Junior dug in hard and pushed Mica backward. Mica lost his footing and slammed into the tethered horses. In the stable and outside, horses danced and nickered in agitation as the battling men slammed, growled, and grunted.

  In the flared honey glow of the lamplight, fists rose and fell, finding purchase on chins, arms, backs, cheeks, eyes. Both men felt teeth loosen as the other’s fists connected with a shot to the mouth, where teeth cut knuckles and split the skin. When they fell apart, minutes later, each man sagged, Mica against a barrel half-filled with scraps of metal, old hames, and broken tools, and Junior to the floor, backed against a timber upright holding the loft in place.

  For a full minute, nothing but heaving breaths could be heard. The horses had stilled and the two closest to the fighting stood fidgeting, barely uttering a throaty snicker.

  “You…damned fool kid…” Mica heaved out the words. “What do you…hope to gain…by killing me? What do you hope to gain by…anything you’re doing?”

  Junior pushed up to his feet and pulled in drafts of air, calming his breathing sooner than Mica. “You just don’t understand, do you, old man?” Junior smiled and dragged a torn sleeve across his bleeding mouth. His eye caught something in the straw a stride away from his feet. He stepped over to it, keeping his eyes on Mica the entire time. “Seems to me you’d have been better off keeping your mouth shut and your nose into your own business.” He bent, retrieved what Mica saw was the Remington, still cocked. The boy blew bits of chaff from the steel and hefted the gun flat on his palm as if comparing its weight with something unseen.

  “Shooting me will only point the finger of blame straight at you, Junior. You’re a young man, a good young man. I’ve known you your entire life. What would your father think of how you’re acting?” Mica watched the boy’s face darken, cloud as if presaging a storm front blowing in hard and fast from the north. That was either a big mistake, thought Mica, or the best thing I could have said.

  “You bring my father into this? I’ve spent years—yes, all those years you’ve known me—trying to live up to his idea of what I should be.” Junior’s voice rose higher, veins framing his forehead bulged with each word he spat.

  “I know that, Junior. I know. I was there too. You forget the times we sneaked some cookies and took off for our secret spot on the bench behind the house—just to talk?” Mica stood full height and stretched, rubbed his shoulder. He was more confident now. He’d cracked the shell of craziness that Junior had let harden over him. Now the Junior he knew might get a chance to breathe again.

  As if reading his thoughts, Junior eased off the Remington’s hammer, but still held it, not quite pointing, not quite at ease. The boy was staring beyond Mica, into the gloom of the stable, when boots sounded behind him, crunching in the barn doorway.

  Chaz Ganzolo, one of the newer hands and one of the few left behind at the ranch while the others were out gathering, peeked in the doorframe, no hat and one side of his red braces flapping loose, his trouser cuffs bunched about his boots. “What’s the problem here, guys? You havin’ a party in here?”

  Despite the situation, Mica smiled at the young man’s half-serious, half-asleep tone. Some party, he thought. “No, Chaz, you go on back to bed.”

  But the young cowboy had seen the pistol in Junior’s hand. His eyes lost the last of their sleepy glaze and traveled from the pistol to Mica, then back to Junior.

  Mica was about to repeat his gentle order to Chaz, but he caught sight of Junior’s face and knew that any progress he’d made at getting through to the Junior hidden away was lost—but only for now, he hoped.

  “I’m just teaching this one here—” Junior wagged the pistol in Mica’s direction—“that he should mind his own business and remember his place.” He shifted his gaze to the Mexican cowboy. “Seems to me you could learn something from this.” He stretched his lips wide and tight over his teeth, the leer in no way resembling a smile. “A word of this and you’ll be draggin’ your saddle across the Llano looking for work, you comprende?”

  Chaz stood still, one hand resting on the door’s edge, the other hanging limp.

  “Go back to bed, Chaz. It’s all right.”

  “Shut it, old man.” Junior once again ratcheted back the hammer. His eyes narrowed and returned to their glinting, frenzied state.

  A sound like a nervous dog might make squeaked out of Chaz, but he didn’t move. He stared first at Junior, but the young man was looking hard at Mica. Mica cut his eyes to Chaz and thrust up his chin once. The young cowhand seemed to understand and he disappeared, walking away from danger. Mica was relieved and not a little envious. A quiet bunk sounded good right about now.

  “You don’t want this, Junior. Just let each of us agree to disagree on whatever it is you’re so bent out of shape about. I’ll go to bed and come tomorrow I won’t mention a thing to anybody, and you do the same.” Mica stood, hands lank by his sides, angry and, more than anything else, tired.

  Shots, Mica knew, would bring the other few hands still at the ranch racing to the scene. He also knew that those boys were already awake and perched on the edge of their bunks, taking in Chaz’s story, unsure if they should rush to Mica’s aid or steer clear of the strange young man they all thought they knew—but now realized they didn’t.

  Junior’s face held, taut and grim, as he mulled over his next step. From a stall in the dark behind Mica, one of the horses blew hard out its nostrils. Another rattled a gate as it circled in its stall, still agitated by the commotion. Junior’s features sagged into exhaustion for the second time that night and as Mica watched, it seemed to him that the boy gained twenty years on his life, so gray-faced and haggard did he appear.

  He eased back the hammer, holstered the pistol, and walked out of the stable without a further word to the man who had been like a second father to him. And that man sagged back against the old barrel and rubbed his thumbs hard into his eyes for a long time, too tired to wonder just what was happening to his adopted family.

  Chapter 37

  “You’re movin’ stiff today, you old dog. Visiting with that chiquita down to the Dancing M’s getting to you, huh?” Wilf winked at Mica, looked up at him as Mica set down a platter of hotcakes. “What in God’s name happened to your face?”

  “Horse threw me.” He let the words trail as he limped back to the kitchen. Mica nearly poked Wilf in the nose, making a comment like that. He pushed the bacon to the back of the griddle and stared at the two brown eggs in his hand. He turned his hand over and appraised his knuckles. Cut all to hell from the boy’s teeth. He ran his tongue over his own teeth, poked at the loose one on the side. Then he set down the eggs, stripped off his apron, and plunked his hat down on his head as he headed out the back door of the kitchen. People thinking something, by God, he’d give them something to justify their suspicions. Might be Espy’d welcome him with a cup of coffee this morning. He didn’t know her as well as he’d like to, but he was beginning to thin
k he knew her a damn sight better than he did this family.

  Wilf heard the door clunk shut, then silence from the kitchen. He sighed and looked around at the empty table. As he speared a stack of cakes, he wondered what in the hell was happening to his family.

  Mica raised his hat, nodded. “Good morning, Esperanza. I was just…passing. Thought I’d check on the boys.”

  Espy nodded, and regarded her old friend, Mica Bain, as he swung down from his horse. He had been in a fight. One cheek was knotted, the other eye reddened. Why did men do these things to each other? To everyone? She slipped her towel over her shoulder. “Have you eaten?”

  Mica pulled off his hat and for the span of a few quiet breaths, their eyes met. He half smiled, shook his head, and followed her inside.

  “Good morning, all,” he whispered. “How are we today?”

  Brandon walked over to Mica, his hand outstretched, but he veered too far to the side.

  “Boy, boy, you better sit yourself back down. No call to be shaking my hand.” Mica steered the dizzy young man to a chair, exchanged a look with Espy.

  “Time,” said Mica. “You just need a little time to get your head mended.” But he knew that sometimes that wasn’t enough. After a blow like that, sometimes people were off their bean forever. Esperanza pushed sausage and sliced chilies around her pan with a wooden spoon. But he saw that her face was tight, as much worry as she would allow herself to show.

  Mica patted the boy’s shoulder softly and looked at the tall man stretched out on the bed to the side of the fireplace, the same bed the boys’ father had died in. Espy was far too practical to move him from it, but it gave Mica the worries anyway. Might be foolish, but it also might be something in what some folks called superstition. Way he looked at it, there was a reason for everything. Even superstitions started somewhere, somehow.

  The big fellow, Middleton, looked better than Mica thought he had a right to. It had been a blessing that the bullet had passed right on through the boy without hitting any vitals. Cleared a path sure enough, though. He’d drizzled half a bottle of medicinal whiskey right into that boy. Mica had hoped Middleton would have stayed unconscious, but the searing pain, he knew, was enough to raise a dead man. And that nearly dead man screamed blue hell. Great bellowing howls as that whiskey tore through him. Scared them all to blazes. And then he’d slept, and for that they’d all been grateful.

  Middleton’s hoarse half whisper pulled Mica out of his reverie. The boy had opened his eyes and looked up at him, and the deep voice suited his size. “I understand I have you to thank.”

  Mica stood by the bed, shook his head. “No, you have Miss Callie and Miss Esperanza here to thank. I was just lending a hand, is all.”

  “But you—”

  “Hush up now, you’ll need your strength.” Mica smiled at him and took a seat at the table. Espy set two places, two cups of steaming coffee, two plates of food, the smells of which forced him to close his eyes and inhale. “Esperanza,” he said, rubbing his big, work-thick hands together. “You are a cook’s cook.”

  She almost smiled.

  Chapter 38

  “Where’ve you been, boy?”

  Junior spun at the sound of his father’s voice behind him, from the gloom of his office. The wide double doors were half-open and Junior saw his father’s silvered hair in a drifting haze of cigarillo smoke. He spun to continue past and trot up the wide, dark stairwell. But he checked himself. Why not talk with the old man? Could be the perfect time to throw any suspicion off him like a dirty shirt being shucked on laundry day.

  “Hey, Pop.” Junior pushed the doors open, let them swing wide behind him. One of them clunked a chair. “What can I do for you today?” He knew he should rein in his tone, but the whiskey he’d finished off on his ride back from town was just now flowering full and warm in his gut and he liked the feeling. Liked it a lot. Maybe that little soak Brandon wasn’t such a sap after all. Too bad we may never know, he thought.

  “What you can do for me is tell me where you been.” Wilf set down his cigarillo in a big black ashtray, the last of the gray smoke curling out of his mouth, chasing the words out the front door.

  Junior shook his head, smiled, and plunked down in the guest chair. “You see, that’s just what I’ve been talking about with the boys down at the Doubloon. You still seem to think I’m just a pup.”

  Wilf regarded the boy for a moment, then leaned back and said, “So you’ve been to the saloon. With the boys.”

  “Yep.” Junior nodded, closing his lids for a moment.

  “Junior!”

  The boy’s eyes snapped open.

  “Least you can do is stay awake when I’m talking with you. You want to be treated like a man, then don’t go running off to the bar when there’s work to be done.”

  Junior knew that somewhere along the line he’d stepped in a big ol’ cow pie. He kept his mouth shut and tried to focus on his father’s scowl.

  Wilf leaned back in his chair, shaking his head and running his fingertips through the carved wood on the armrests. “I’ll take your silence to mean that you know nothing of the events of the past couple of days.”

  Junior let his father’s comments sink in. Sure, he’d left in a huff, ticked off Mica and his father at the same time. But…then he remembered what he’d done, remembered clubbing Brandon, shooting Middleton, then his heart hammering hard in his rib cage to get out of there. He blinked hard. This whiskey was starting to play tricks on him, making him forget things that he knew just five minutes before.

  When he left the saloon he’d gotten his story straight, finally headed home, knowing he couldn’t stay away forever, just long enough to establish what seemed to him to be a likely alibi. No one would remember how long he’d been whoopin’ it up if he stayed there for a few days; at least that’s what he hoped. And all had been fine—felt fine—until his father started in with the questions.

  A hard knob of fear knotted in his gut and he stood, squawking the chair backward on the wood floor. “No time for jawin’, Pop. Got work to do.”

  He forced himself to focus on his father’s face.

  “Sit down, boy. I’m not through with you.”

  Despite his best intentions, Junior felt himself dropping back into the chair, just like old times. Get up, get up, he told himself. But it didn’t work. The old man glared at him just like the portrait of Grandfather at the top of the stairs.

  Wilf leaned over his desk, seeming to balance his entire body on his fingertips. “Now, you will sit there and shut your drunken mouth for a minute. Then you can drag your sorry self upstairs and sleep off what’s left of your spree and waste the rest of the day in the bargain. By God, I’ll not have you slopping around with the men and have them think that’s how a Grindle conducts himself. And in the middle of the afternoon too.”

  Junior felt tired and try as he might he knew he wasn’t about to raise himself from the chair. Let the old man yell, he thought. I’ll just sit right here and sleep through it all. He half smiled and closed his eyes.

  Wilf stared at his boy. He had been about to tell the drunken sot that they’d found Callie safe and sound, no thanks to him, but that the other young drunk of the region, Brandon, had attacked his half brother and now they were both near dead. He’d been about to tell the young fool all this—and then Junior dozed off right there in front of him. It was more than Wilf could stand.

  He grabbed the corner of the desk and propelled himself at the boy. The fire in his veins was a feeling of rage such as he hadn’t known in years. He reached out and smacked the young fool hard across the mouth with a sharp, stout hand. The lad’s eyes flew open and for a moment Wilf thought he might have to hit him again—harder, this time. But Junior just sat there, shaking his head, trying to focus on the situation before him.

  “What…happened?”

  “I hit you, you little fool. And I’ll do it again if need be.” Wilf growled and rubbed his reddened hand as if polishing a fine knife blade. H
e breathed a rapid cadence through his nose, like a small bull with its blood up.

  The boy rose from the chair, his right fist windmilling wide and high, clearing Wilf’s head. The rancher raised his left arm out of reflex and blocked the wayward swing, then pumped two short, tight punches into his son’s gut. The boy half spun backward and dropped to his knees, coughing and gagging, snot and blood spooling to the carpet.

  “I’ll…kill you…for that!”

  Wilf snorted. “Pack yourself a meal, boy. Killin’ me will take you all day. Better men than you have tried to get the drop on Wilfred Grindle!” He grasped the boy’s belt from behind and heaved him to his feet, then bum-rushed him to the stairwell. “Now get up there and sleep it off, damn you!” He stood at the base of the stairs. His hands, trembling in shock and rage, hung tight at his sides in half fists, ready for another round. Up out of view, the boy’s door slammed hard. Wilf sighed, ran a thumb and forefinger hard into his eyes, then turned back to his wide-open office doors.

  He was nearly through when movement from the doorway’s shadow pulled Wilf’s gaze. Mica leaned there, watching him. “Mica—how long…”

  “No worries from me, Wilf.” The tall black man straightened. “No worries. Just wanted to tell you I’ll be heading on over to the Dancing M for the day. Espy—Esperanza—could use a hand, what with the boys stoved up an’ all.”

  Wilf worked his teeth together tight and turned from the door. “And I suppose Callie has practically moved in there with that…that Mexican and her damned brood! What makes everyone think they can just up and leave the Driving D?”

  Wilf turned around and flicked an accusing finger at his oldest living friend. “I haven’t paid you all these years so you can work someone else’s ranch! I deserve—no, no—I demand to be treated with more respect by you and these ungrateful offspring of mine. One’s a drunk, one’s a flirting thing just shy of a floozy…and you! Look at you…all dolled up like it’s Sunday-Go-to-Meeting Day!” He stared at his friend standing in the doorway.