Promise of Revenge

by Lauran Paine

  The café man did not come for Ladd’s order. He instead brought coffee and a platter of steak, hashed spuds, and a piece of warm apple pie. The pie in particular was unbelievably delectable, and yet to look at the slovenly café man it was hard to believe he could have made such a thing.

  An older man arrived, sat next to Ladd, and, as he reached for the tinned milk to weaken his coffee, he winced and exasperatedly said: “God damn rheumatics.”

  Ladd handed over the tinned milk and gazed at his neighbor. The man was at least sixty and in fact probably was seventy years old. He was tall and gaunt and scarred. His hands were stained and work-roughened. Ladd said: “You wouldn’t be Mister Warner, would you?”

  The old man finished washing down his coffee, then looked over. “I’d be,” he admitted.

  Ladd introduced himself and smiled. “I been on the trail three weeks getting down here after seeing an ad you had in a newspaper up north.”

  The old man’s eyes brightened. “Is that a fact? About the harness works?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, well,” stated old Warner, and pushed out a hand. “Shake, son, then we’ll finish eatin’ and walk across the road.” Warner reached for his knife and fork. “You married by any chance?”

  Ladd wasn’t. “No, sir. I’m single.”

  “That’s good,” stated the harness maker, “because the shop’ll make a decent livin’ for one person, but it won’t support no woman, too, and no kids.” Warner studied Ladd a moment as he chewed. After he swallowed, he asked another question. “You got enough real money to buy me out?”

  “Depends on how much you got to have,” stated Ladd.

  “Well . . . five hundred dollars?”

  Ladd took his time about answering. He drank coffee, hacked at his breakfast steak with a dull knife, looked around, then smiled at old Warner. “Kind of hard to eat and talk business at the same time,” he murmured.

  Old Warner had to be satisfied, then, until their meals were finished and they passed out into the new day sunlight. The town marshal was passing and unsmilingly nodded at them, his gray gaze flickering in recognition over Ladd Buckner. Across the road in the harness shop the smell was pleasantly familiar; it was an amalgam of tobacco smoke, new leather, and horse sweat, but mostly it was of new leather.

  Old Warner puttered, handling tools, talking as he moved from workbench to cutting table to sewing horse and finally to the counter and the hangers where repair work hung, each article with a scrap of paper on it giving a name and a price in cryptic longhand. It required no great power of observation to see how difficult this day was for the old man. He had spent a major portion of his life here, good years and bad, wet years and drought years. He had buried a wife while operating this business, had raised two children, only one of which, a daughter, had survived, and from that front window he had watched dozens of friends he had known most of his life pass by for the last time.

  Finally he went over to poke some life into a small cast-iron stove and to place a dirty old graniteware coffee pot atop it, and to remove his hat and scratch, then resettle the hat as he said: “What can you stand, son?”

  Ladd had one thousand dollars in Union greenbacks in a belt around his middle. Five hundred of it was in old-style notes, five hundred was in later, and crisper, greenbacks. He said: “Mister Warner, I can’t buy it and sell it, too. You put on a price, and, if it’s too much, I’ll just walk back out of here, and if it’s not too much, we’ll shake on it.”

  Old Warner was aged and lined and stooped but his eyes were as clear as new glass while he made his judgment, then said: “Five hundred dollars, Mister Buckner.” He smiled a trifle sadly. “It’s worth more, but I’d a sight rather see you succeed than have to operate hand to mouth only to get cleaned out if a bad year hit the range and folks didn’t come in very much. You keep back what you got to have to operate on and give me five hundred, and tomorrow morning I’ll be on the stage to California.”

  They shook hands, then Ladd went to the workbench, reached inside his shirt to unbuckle and remove the money belt, and under the frankly interested gaze of old Warner he counted out $500. In turn, the harness maker wrote him out a painstakingly clear and inclusive bill of sale, then, after handing this over, Warner turned and looked around, and turned back with a grim-faced little nod.

  “Treat it good, son, and it’ll do as much for you. It’s a fair and decent livin’ and it’s got a reputation for doing right by folks.”

  Ladd went out to the shaded overhang with the harness maker, feeling poignant and sad for the old man.

  Warner turned and smiled as he said: “Good luck, son. Someday you’ll come to this day, the same as I came to it, and I sure hope you can turn it over to the next young buck with a plumb clear conscience.”

  Ladd watched old Warner trudge northward in the direction of the stage station, watched him turn in up there, then he also turned and walked away, heading for his new business. He was experienced. He was a good saddle maker. In fact, he had more experience at saddle making than he had working up sets of harness. For a couple of hours, until the liveryman brought in four broken leather halters, Ladd examined the patterns and templates. The liveryman looked surprised. After a moment of explaining what he wanted done to the halters, he looked up with a squint and said: “You’re the new harness maker?”

  Ladd introduced himself. “Yeah. Mister Warner sold out to me.”

  “You’re young,” said the liveryman, who was not quite old Warner’s age but who was fast approaching it.

  Ladd smiled. “I’ll hang around Piñon until I can remedy that,” he said. “Tell you what. I’ll repair your halters, and, if you don’t like my work, you don’t have to pay for it. Fair?”

  The liveryman nodded. “Fair.” He walked out without offering his hand or smiling. In a place no larger than Piñon where most residents had been there all their lives or at least for over a dozen years, newcomers were never viewed with frank delight, first off. Barring Joe Reilly, Ladd did not expect to be taken to the town’s heart by its established residents until he had earned that kind of recognition. He was willing to work for it. He had his reasons for being willing to work for respect and acceptance. If even Joe Reilly had known the reason for his willingness to do this, Joe would probably have been just a tad more reserved in his association with Ladd Buckner. As it was, Joe got his first outside opinion of Buckner three days after old Warner had departed forever from Piñon, and the new saddle and harness maker was organizing his time and materials to turn out his first riding saddle as the newest businessman in Piñon.

  Chad Holmes of Muleshoe rode into town with two of his cow camp men on the seat of a ranch wagon, and, while the rig was being loaded around back at the dock of the general store, Chad and his range men went up to the saloon for beer. There, Joe Reilly mentioned the new harness maker, only to discover that the men from Muleshoe already knew him. In fact, as the range men told the story to Reilly, Ladd Buckner was a dead shot with his carbine and one of the best fellows in the entire territory to have on your side in a skirmish with ragheads.

  Joe inevitably broadcast this tale. Ladd did not know the Muleshoe men had been in town. Neither Chad nor the others came across to the harness works to see him. The first Ladd knew that his episode on Tomahawk Meadow had finally reached town was when two teenage embryonic cowboys who lived with their parents in town arrived at the saddle shop one afternoon to stare and smile a lot, and finally to blurt out that they had heard Ladd was a professional Indian fighter, and that he had come along and had single-handedly routed an entire war party of Mescalero Apaches, the worst of the lot, with only his Winchester.

  Ladd laughed, then came over to the counter to lean there and explain exactly what had happened out there, beginning with his own very strong desire to be anywhere else when he rode up out of the cañon and found himself in the middle of a fierce little gunfight. The boys left, finally, to spread the word that along with being probably the most formid
able Indian fighter since Al Sieber, Piñon’s new harness maker was also a man imbued with that most valued of all frontier ethics—modesty.

  It all helped. Joe Reilly did his share, too, and whatever some people, most particularly womenfolk, thought of Reilly’s profession, people were inclined to trust his judgment of humanity. Joe favored Ladd Buckner, so it became a lot easier for folks to smile a little, and to nod. The liveryman, too, admitted that old Warner hadn’t been able to sew as well in years, when he got his busted halters back. “And he’s makin’ a saddle,” stated the liveryman to his cronies out front in tree shade at the loafers’ bench near the stone trough. “He’s an honest workman. No danged copper rivets in the rigging. It’s every bit of it hand-stitched and buckskin-threaded. That’s how I tell an honest man. When he does something right, even when he knows it ain’t going to show when he’s through with it.”

  “But he’s young,” muttered one of the townsmen who regularly sat down there out front of the livery barn chewing cut plug and whittling on soft cottonwood chunks.

  “Well, God dammit,” stated the exasperated liveryman, “so was you, once, Al, although darn’ few of us can remember it now. Anyway, give him enough time and he’ll outgrow that.”

  “He’ll probably raise the prices,” grumbled another older man. “They all do. Let some new feller come to town and buy in, and the first thing he’ll do every time is raise the blasted prices.”

  The liveryman had a retort for that, too. “Tell you how I feel about that. He fixed up four busted halters for me and hardly charged enough to cover the thread let alone the time. I figure I’m that much ahead right now, so the next few times he could even charge me a mite more and I’d still be breaking even.”

  The other older men went silent and remained that way for a while about the new harness maker. Therefore, what possible good could come out it if the liveryman, who was favorably impressed, continued in pressing this discussion? None, of course. Eventually one of the old men got back upon a topic that they never wearied of, and that they never agreed upon, either, but that they could discuss and swear about and denounce one another over without much danger of actually hurting anyone’s feelings—politics.

  No one else in Piñon cared a whoop about politics, and generally for a very good reason. They did not live in a state of the federal Union; they resided in a territory, and since all the territorial areas of the U.S. were administered by the Army, there was very little of the elective process to make politics interesting. Otherwise, of course, there were the national elections, but out in Arizona someone could run for President and even be elected, and Arizonans would not even know who he was for several weeks after he’d moved into the White House. It usually took that long for the news to reach isolated cow communities like Piñon.

  V

  For Ladd Buckner there were a number of concerns to take precedence over such things as politics, and he was not, and never had been, very politically aware. Like most people out in the territories, living from day to day with hardship, privation, and real peril, politics like a lively social involvement constituted a luxury. It would be a full generation yet before the cow country would be able to afford a socialized strata or a politically active environment. Presently as Ladd told Town Marshal Tom Wharton when the lawman strolled in for coffee and a visit one morning, perpetuating a habit he had established fifteen years earlier with old man Warner, if a person could just eat three times a day, keep dry, and pay his bills, he was probably doing about as well as folks could expect to do in Arizona Territory.

  Tom Wharton, who was quite a bit older than Ladd Buckner, who had run the gamut from Indian scout to buffalo hunter, to range man and lawman, sipped coffee over by the stove and slowly nodded his head. “And keep out of trouble,” he added, watching Ladd buck stitch a bucking roll. “Eat, keep dry, pay the bills, and keep out of trouble.” He eyed Ladd Buckner thoughtfully. “You haven’t met Doctor Orcutt yet, have you? Well, sir, he told me one time that it was his opinion that, if folks out here didn’t get shot or snake bit or horse kicked, they’d probably live longer than the national average. It’s healthy out here. The air is clean, the food is natural, the water’s not bad from too many years of folks abusing it.”

  “Just keep away from ragheads,” said Ladd whimsically. “Don’t set in any drafts, and maybe mind your own business a little.”

  Tom Wharton sparingly smiled. He rarely smiled any other way. “You’ve got it about right.” He watched the strong, deft hands working at the sewing horse. “You sew well,” he said. “That’s sure going to be one hell of a good saddle when you’re finished with it. You know, when old Warner was younger, I didn’t think there was a better man with leather in the territory. I’m beginnin’ to figure you might be just as good.” Marshal Wharton finished his coffee, rinsed the cup, and draped it from the nail above the cutting table where it had hung suspended beside old Warner’s coffee mug for years. “I’ll break the habit,” he told Ladd, “if it bothers you to have a person bargin’ in first thing each morning and having a cup of java. It’s just that old Warner and I had that arrangement for many years, and now I got it as a habit.”

  Ladd looked up from the sewing horse. “Nothing’s going to change very much in the shop,” he told the lawman with a little warm smile. “I’ll keep putting the pot on first thing, Marshal.”

  “Tom,” said the lawman, winked, and strolled out into the sunlight of a new day.

  Ladd had an opportunity to meet the man Marshal Wharton had spoken of that same afternoon when the medical practitioner walked in to have the grip on his satchel repaired. It had broken loose. As Dr. Orcutt said, they just didn’t put handles onto things like they did when he was first in practice a number of years back. Then he laughed at himself. Up close, Ladd got his first good look at the doctor, and came to the conclusion that, although Enos Orcutt looked quite young, he was probably in his forties. Ladd also made another judgment of the doctor. Enos Orcutt talked and acted, and even looked like a man who marched to the cadence of his own drummer. It was a good judgment; if there was one thing Dr. Orcutt was known for around the countryside, it was an independent mind and manner. When other medical men were prescribing purgatives for appendicitis, Dr. Orcutt was applying ice packs and performing swift surgery. He left Ladd with a feeling that he would be a good man to put one’s trust in.

  When Ladd handed over the repaired satchel, the doctor said: “Perfect match for the first time it was ever done, after I bought the satchel up in Colorado, Mister Buckner. That time it lasted six years, the longest it’s ever lasted.”

  Ladd smiled. “Doctor, try putting it down and lifting it up. No leather on earth can stand too much roughness.”

  Enos Orcutt smiled back, but skeptically. “Mister Buckner, in my business you don’t always have time to put something down or lift it up. Sometimes you have to toss your satchel into the buggy, and sometimes you also have to yank it with you when you jump out of the rig. But I’ll try. How much?”

  “Ten cents,” replied Ladd, and watched the doctor count out the small silver coins.

  As Orcutt headed for the door he said: “You come from Colorado, did you?”

  Ladd nodded, then puzzled a little over that question. Why had the doctor asked it, and why hadn’t he said Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, or Montana? It did not matter. Ladd went back to do some of the repair work that had trickled in over the past week or so. He had learned long ago that the articles folks brought to be repaired were important to them on a day-to-day basis and the surest way to antagonize people was not to have their articles ready when they called for them.

  The liveryman returned, this time with a woman’s side-saddle that had slipped under a horse, had dumped its rider but without serious injury, although the agitated horse had proceeded to kick the saddle unmercifully until someone could control the beast and remove the outfit. Ladd looked at the remains without commenting, and the liveryman, who was watching Ladd’s face as some sort of gauge as to
what the repair bill might be, finally said: “It’s genuine old Kentucky spring seat, Ladd. It’d be a blessed shame to toss it into the rubbish heap. They don’t make spring seats anymore.”

  Ladd avoided a definite commitment by saying: “Come back day after tomorrow.” The reason he gave no commitment was because he was unsure of the actual condition of the tree beneath the leather. If the tree were still sound, then all he would have to do would be replace a lot of leather. If the tree were smashed . . .

  Tom Wharton, in one of his pre-breakfast morning coffee sessions, told Ladd how the accident had occurred that had resulted in the ruin of the side-saddle. “Darned kids walking down the alley with a big old yeller mongrel were pitching rocks for the dog to chase. They rolled a stone directly under the damned horse and it took to bucking. The cincha was loose anyway. The lady wasn’t hurt.” Tom’s gray eyes assumed their near smile as he said: “Maybe she’ll be eating off the mantel for a few days, though.”

  Ladd put the side-saddle upon a workhorse and showed Tom Wharton the extent of the damage. He also showed him how a genuine spring seat was constructed, and, although Marshal Wharton was interested, up to a point, in the articles of a trade that had been as much a part of his life as anything else, the saddle was a woman’s rig, and Ladd Buckner discovered a probable reason for Tom Wharton’s single status. He did not show the least interest in the Kentucky saddle because it had been made for women; he clearly did not have much regard for womenfolk.

  “The father of the lad who owned the yellow dog,” Marshal Wharton related, “was going to whale the daylights out of the dog. I stopped him on the grounds that the dog didn’t do a blessed thing he wasn’t supposed to do . . . which was obey his master. Then the damned fool was going to larrup his lad, and I stopped that, also. The boy had no idea the rock would roll under that darned horse.”