McAllister 6

by Matt Chisholm

  In fact, as McAllister caught them both in the circle of his glass, Brennan was sweating on the fact that he had been out of town for too long. Now he had to take his gamble.

  ‘Miss Wallach,’ he said, ‘you have behaved very sensibly and are to be congratulated. I’m sorry to put you to this trouble, but, well, there’s mighty powerful men who want you back in town. Was I you, I’d catch the stage from Caspar as she comes through here.’ He checked his watch, a large silver hunter, and said: ‘She’ll be along within the hour. Somebody will check whether you’re back in town. I wouldn’t leave again, or it might go badly for your father. And you wouldn’t want that, would you, Miss Wallach?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t want that.’ If she was scared, she did not show it. Brennan was full of admiration for her and was glad that he had not had to kill her. Killing a woman was bad enough, but killing one of this quality was more than a man liked to contemplate.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I’ll get on my way. I doubt you’ll come to harm here, so near the trail. Just stay under cover here till you hear the stage coming. You’ll be able to hear it about a mile off. The day’s clear enough. Good day to you, ma’am.’

  She bowed her head slightly and said: ‘Good day to you, sir.’

  He walked to his horse, mounted it and rode off into the trees without another word or glance at her. She listened to the beat of his horse’s hoofs going away into the distance. She had no doubt that he had genuinely gone.

  There not being any more she was able to do, she waited. This, she thought, would be a bright piece of color for her book and she sat there wondering just how she would write it. It seemed no time at all when she heard McAllister’s soft whistle and, looking around, saw him riding down from above, leading the spare horse behind him.

  He chuckled as he dismounted and said: ‘I have to hand it to you, Debbie. You look as calm as can be.’

  She smiled. ‘Not much use in being anything else, Rem.’

  He handed her into the saddle. She had trouble with her skirts, riding side-saddle, and she showed more leg than was proper for the times, but it did not seem the occasion to make a fuss about such things. They lifted their horses into a gallop, came down out of the trees after the Black Horse-bound stage had passed, and reached the trail. Within an hour they were in the presence of that doyen of stage-drivers, old Cheddy, and he was beaming with delight at the sight of her safe and sound.

  ‘You take the biscuit, Rem,’ he said. ‘Anybody else would have had lead flying and bloodshed. Neatly done.’

  ‘There’ll be bloodshed enough before we’re done,’ McAllister told him.

  The stage was drawn off the trail deep in timber. The passengers sat around on the ground, smoking. They sauntered up, all men known to McAllister. He said to Cheddy: ‘Now, she don’t arrive in Caspar as Debbie Wallach, hear? A different name, different appearance. She did not come from Black Horse and she ain’t going to light at Caspar.’

  Cheddy said: ‘Leave it all to us, Rem.’

  Debbie dimpled. ‘Rem, you’re enjoying all this, aren’t you? The only way I can repay you is to dedicate the next book to you. How does this sound “For Remington McAllister, Sheriff of Black Horse, without whom Chapter Twelve would not have been possible.”.’

  He kissed her and handed her into the stage. The others cheered a little. He said: ‘You repay me by getting safely to Chicago, young lady.’ He watched the stage out of sight, then turned his horses back for Black Horse. At least he had gotten through that little episode without bullets flying around Debbie and maybe one hitting her. But perhaps he would have saved a whole lot of grief by planting a bullet between Brennan’s shoulder-blades back there. However, as he rode and thought, he doubted that a bullet in Brennan would solve anything much. There had to be somebody big behind the man, and that was who McAllister wanted. No matter how big.

  Two hours later, McAllister walked into the Clarion office and told an anxious Lennie Wallach: ‘She’s on the stage to Caspar and, all being well, on the road to Chicago. It all went as smooth as silk.’

  ‘Give me the details,’ said Lennie. ‘I want it all in tomorrow’s issue. Though how the hell I’m to make out without Debbie, I don’t know.’

  ‘By the way,’ said McAllister, ‘before we get down to cases, Len. How would you be interested in investing some money in a horse?’

  ‘A horse?’ cried Wallach.

  ‘Why look so surprised? I breed the goddam things, don’t I?’

  Fifteen

  There were things that Carl Mittelhouse did well, some he did not so well and others which he did badly. Those which he did not so well, he did only in private – where the critical eyes of his fellow men could not mock him. Those which he did badly, he did not do at all, but hired other men to do them for him.

  One of the things which he did superlatively well was to ride western style. He was a Texan and had been reared to it. He performed with a consummate ease and grace which caught the admiration even of his own riders. He could neither rope nor do most of the other tasks which came naturally to a cowhand. So he left such things to them.

  He understood horses better than cattle, of which he knew comparatively little. So he concentrated on horses and the money which Al Corby made for him with cattle. Corby would probably continue to do so for a long time, for Mittelhouse paid him a top salary.

  Between Mittelhouse and his manager there existed a curious relationship and now, as they moved out to the holding ground during the late roundup, they talked together with the ease which comes after two men know each other for a long time. It was not an intimate relationship, but it was a pretty sound one. Corby had worked for Mittelhouse for ten years and been loyal to him for nine.

  It happened like this – Corby had been hired in the first place as a foreman under a manager named Hetman. This Hetman and certain members of the crew had been modestly robbing their boss for years, mostly through the trick of sleepering, which consisted of marking an animal with a short-life brand (which could be done in various ways) so that it was not rebranded at branding time. Later, in some quiet corner of the range, the rustlers would mark the animal with their own brand. The custom was such an old one that it was almost time-honored. One day, however, Mittelhouse, who thought that he was not making the profit that he should, brought in a range detective and pretty soon he had the guilty men singled out. He fired them all except two. One was a Mexican named Gutierrez, who was an invaluable roper and tracker. He put a big scare into this man and knew that he would stay scared; so he let him stay. The other was Corby, whom he assessed as being under-employed. So he promoted him from foreman to manager, with the warning that he would hang him if he caught him stealing another crittur. Corby knew a good thing when he saw it and from that day to this had remained his boss’s man. Mittelhouse had never regretted his decisions. The other guilty men he had fired and black-listed, which put a number of cattle- thieves on the market who hated him. Cattlemen said that Mittelhouse should have hanged the whole bunch of them, and sometimes he thought that maybe they were right.

  The two men now rode the range together at ease in each other’s company. Mittelhouse for his part enjoyed Corby’s, for he found the man’s simple directness refreshing. The manager showed respect, but he was never obsequious. In private he allowed himself to be blunt and Mittelhouse valued that.

  Both men showed their respect for horseflesh and their admiration of quality by the mounts they rode. Corby forked a steel-dust of mixed mustang, quarter horse descent: a sturdy, quick animal, good-natured and tractable, an animal which understood cows and the rope. A top cutting-horse for a top cowman, showing utility and class to an unusual degree. Mittelhouse’s mount was of a different degree, standing a good hand or two taller, possessing racier lines. Here the native mustang had long ago been crossed with a powerful barb of Spanish conformation. Since then thoroughbred blood had been introduced to produce one of the famous Mittelhouse horses: rangy, fast and w
ith plenty of bottom. They were not cattle horses and were never meant to be. This animal was a bay with shining black points and mane, a long blaze on his forehead and nose, eyes alert, pace lively.

  Mittelhouse said: ‘This race, Corby – do you take it seriously?’

  ‘Yessir, I do.’

  ‘This man Tully holding the stakes, is he straight?’

  ‘As a die.’

  ‘Shall we put a horse in?’

  Corby looked at him as if it was a crazy question. ‘You bet your sweet life, Mr Mittelhouse, and then some.’

  ‘More than one?’

  ‘Champion for a cert. Triumph to show we have two horses almost as good as each other.’

  Mittelhouse laughed softly to himself in genuine amusement. ‘I like that,’ he said. ‘That has style. But two thousand dollars is a lot of money.’

  Corby said: ‘Besides other things – well-spent for the fun you’ll get out of it.’

  ‘What other things?’

  Corby looked off to the horizon, as if wondering whether he should answer that or not. Finally, he said: ‘Maybe I’m thinking mostly of McAllister, sir. Christ, it’s time somebody gave that son-of-a-bitch his comeuppance.’

  ‘He seems to stick in your craw.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. I like the man. In trouble there’s nobody I would care more to have alongside. It’s just he always wins. Always, not just sometimes. His luck, I swear, is out of this world. It ain’t right one man should have that amount of luck. I tell you straight, if that feller dropped into a heap of shit, he’d come up smelling of roses. I ain’t never seen such luck, not in all my born days.’

  ‘I hear he’s something of a gunfighter.’

  ‘Gunfighter? He ain’t no whit better nor worse than anybody else, but he takes on men with reps from here to Mexico and he beats them to a standstill. It ain’t natural.

  ‘And he has good horses.’

  ‘You know it. None better. I would give my right arm for one of his canelos, and that’s the truth, with all the good horses we have on the Running M.’

  ‘They have a certain style, I’ll give you that. But how will they stand up against Champion?’

  Corby looked uneasy. ‘It’s going to be a long race. From what I hear it takes in some mighty tricky country. The MC connected horses are made like goddam goats. And they have all the bottom there is. It ain’t going to be a pushover for Champion. If you’re going to run him, you’ll have to get him into training for rough country as soon as maybe.

  ‘We’ll do that.’

  They rode on in silence, both of them thinking about McAllister; Corby because of the horses, Mittelhouse because of the woman: Mrs Rosa Claythorn, widow of the late Colonel Harold Montefiori Claythorn, United States Cavalry, boy hero of the Civil War when he had led a charge against Confederate guns, lost half his command and earned himself a hell of a lot of kudos – plus a beautiful wife ten years later, when she was looking for a nationally known hero for a husband. When she landed Claythorn she not only caught herself a hero, but a rich hero. It sounded brutal when Mittelhouse put it that way to himself. It made her out a bitch, and he knew she was not. She was a beautiful woman and a very nice one. It just so happened that she liked money. He could hardly judge her for that; he liked money himself.

  He had caught her looking at this man McAllister in a way she had never looked at him with a sort of undefined hunger in her eyes. It made Mittelhouse uneasy. For the first time in his life, he was scared that he could not obtain the woman he wanted. Maybe he was not as confident as usual because he had never wanted a woman in this way before.

  He was scared also that he was about to make a fool of himself over a woman, something he had not done since he was seventeen and still at college.

  Although intensely feminine, she possessed many attributes which would not have been misplaced in a man. One of these was her pride. There he could match her, for though few of his emotions were intense, in the matter of his pride he was very intense indeed.

  Take the matter of his name, for example. A generation ago, his father had partly anglicized it, and it would have been natural, as had been suggested to him, for him to anglicize it entirely – make it Middlehouse and have done. But he would not. If that was his name, he would be damned before it was altered. His father had wanted to change the Carl to Charles, but he would have none of it.

  The woman was a deep worry in his mind. He had never begged a woman in his life and now he had the feeling that he would never get her without humbling himself. Once he had humbled himself, he knew that he would never recover himself in her eyes. He would be a lapdog for the rest of his life.

  ‘Like hell I will,’ he said out loud, and Corby looked at him with a start. Mittelhouse glared at him angrily, daring him to speak.

  Corby did not speak, he merely pointed across his boss to the east. Mittelhouse followed the pointing finger with his gaze and saw the object of his thoughts riding with her companion. Rosa Claythorn and May Harris were cantering their horses down the long gradient towards the two men. They turned their horses to meet them.

  The two ladies were becomingly flushed from their exercise as they drew rein.

  Rosa was laughing. ‘Carl, that was wonderful. We let the horses run all the way from the house.’

  Mittelhouse was pleased to find that he felt gentle and unresentful towards her. He said: ‘It’s plain to see that you like the West. It suits you. And how about you, Miss May, are you enjoying it?’

  The other girl, so firmly placed in the background by the force of the other’s character, was startled at being addressed. She and Rosa had been at the ranch a week but Mittelhouse had given little indication that he knew she was there.

  ‘Enjoying it?’ she said in amazement at the question. ‘I don’t know how ever I shall get used to living in the city again.’

  Corby smiled. ‘Miss May,’ he said, ‘a few days of our winter here and you’d think even Kansas was lovely.’

  She said with some spirit: ‘All you Westerners talk that way, Mr Corby. But you don’t know. There must have been Eastern ladies who settled out here.’

  ‘Settled maybe, but liked it – never.’

  ‘Not ever?’

  He grinned. ‘I never heard tell of one.’

  ‘Rosa, do you believe that?’

  ‘I would say it depends mostly on what kind of a life a man has to offer a woman.’

  Mittelhouse said: ‘Out here a man can offer a woman everything he can back East, and more. Just look around you.’

  Rosa laughed and said: ‘I’m not talking about anything so tangible.’

  May Harris looked uncomfortable. Mittelhouse said: ‘You must excuse us, ladies. Corby and I are on our way to the branding. That’s all blood, dust and unpleasant smells, so we will not offer it to you.’

  The two girls turned their horses towards home, waving to them and rode away. Corby watched them go, saying: ‘Two fine women, if a man may say so.’

  Mittelhouse reckoned that he did not like the way she had looked at that fellow McAllister at all. For that matter, he didn’t like the way he had looked at her either. What the hell was he getting nervous about? What chance had a man like that with a woman like Rosa? Just the same, he was uneasy.

  As they rode down towards the gathering ground, the owner turned to his manager and said: ‘Which way is our sheriff going to jump when the lid blows off, Corby?’

  ‘You reckon it is going to blow off, Mr Mittelhouse?’

  ‘It has to. So which way?’

  ‘My recollections are, McAllister has always thrown in with law and order.’

  The owner said a little testily: ‘That doesn’t answer my question exactly.’

  Corby shot him a look. He said: ‘I reckon you know something I don’t.’

  ‘You came to all the association’s meetings, Corby.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t read between the lines the same way you do, boss.’

  ‘You’d want your eyes teste
d if you didn’t see there’s going to be a showdown this year or next between the cattle-raisers and the cow-thieves.’

  Corby read the language aright. For ‘cow-thieves’ read ‘small cattlemen’ or sheepmen or settlers – anybody who had not appropriated vast areas of the public domain for his own use.

  Corby said: ‘I reckon it wouldn’t go amiss to tread carefully here. There’s men in the association who wouldn’t hesitate to hang the whole opposition if trouble starts.’

  Mittelhouse looked at him curiously. ‘You mean you wouldn’t?’

  ‘I mean I ain’t so damned stupid I can’t tell a cow-thief from a greasy-sack rancher.’

  ‘Mostly there’s no difference.’

  ‘When it comes to hanging, every little difference counts. I ain’t a butcher and I don’t mean to start.’

  Mittelhouse grew silent and he wondered if he had been right about Corby. He had never seen this side of the man before.

  ‘Do you feel no loyalty to your cattle, Corby?’

  The question acted like a red-hot branding iron on the man. He positively flinched. ‘You know better than to ask that, Mr Mittelhouse,’ he said. ‘You caught my hand in the cookie jar, but that was ten years back. Since that time I didn’t ever give you cause to say a thing like that.’

  Mittelhouse laughed in rueful embarrassment. ‘All right, all right,’ he said. ‘It’s just we can’t have you going soft when a hard man may be needed.’

  ‘When it comes to roping anybody we catch lifting Running M cows, you won’t find me soft. It’s just I don’t aim to burn folks in their houses like I’ve heard it’s been done in some parts.’

  Mittelhouse said: ‘You made your point, Corby.’

  The manager rode on, staring dully between his horse’s ears. He was sulking and he would sulk for quite a while yet. God help the hand who offended him today.

  ‘All right, Corby,’ said Mittelhouse, ‘I apologize.’

  ‘No call,’ Corby said shortly. ‘It’s your outfit. You do like you want.’

  They fell silent now as they neared the holding ground. The mixed crew was working over about five hundred cattle, sorting one brand from another, observers watchful that the right calf went with the right cow, watchful for slick-ears. Men cried the mother’s brand as they caught and threw the calf, and the brander darted for the appropriate iron. The man in charge here was the Running M foreman, Rod Cramer, a tall Texan in his mid-thirties and with few words to spare. He knew his job and was trusted by all the cowmen in the area. That was why he usually acted as roundup boss. Just the same, the reps from the other ranchers all watched him as closely as if he had been a known thief. It was a scene that Mittelhouse loved – the apparent indiscipline and untidiness which concealed the very opposite. Here, every man had to know his job. Cramer did not suffer fools gladly or any other way. Even Mittelhouse kept at a safe distance and watched. It did the crew good to know that the owner and manager were around sometimes. Cramer did not so much as glance in his direction.