Cherokee (8 page)

He stared at me then. “What'd you say?”

“I said get off your horse.”

He spat. Not at me, but closer than I cared for. “Mister, you can go screw a mule tellin' me when to git on er off my horse. Lis'sen, I'm by gawd—”

My gun was suddenly in my hand. “I'll tell you once more. Get off your horse.”

His mouth closed as abruptly as if he'd closed it to keep a bug from flying in. He stared at the revolver in my hand. He said, a little unsteadily, “That a pistol in yore hand?”

“That's damn good, Jordan. Next you'll notice there's a hat on my head and a shirt on my back. Get off your horse. Now!”

I could see he wanted to ask me what for. I didn't want him to ask me that because I didn't know the answer. I was angry, bad angry, and I was trying to calm myself down before I did something I'd regret later. I watched as he pulled his horse back to give himself room, then dismounted. I said, “Drop them reins.”

He said, “My horse'll run off.”

“Shit,” I said in disgust. Man didn't even know how to train a horse to ground-rein. I eased out of the saddle. We were standing between our two horses. Jordan was about three feet away. He was wearing a sidegun, but he was carefully keeping his hands wide of his sides.

“Pull a gun on a man,” he said. But he was all eyes for the .42/.40-caliber Colt revolver in my hand. “By gawd, it'll be murder. They'll ketch you.”

“Shut up, Jordan,” I said. “I'm not going to shoot you. I pulled the gun because you wouldn't shut your big mouth. And you were putting it on my family. Now I'm going to tell you something. You ever bad-mouth my family and I hear about it, I
will
pull a gun, only I'll use it next time. You understand that?”

He just stared at me, pure anger and hate in his eyes. “I unn'erstan' any sonofabitch can talk tough when he's holdin' a gun on a man ain't got one in his hand. You put that sonofabitch up and see how tough you talk.”

“Jordan, you are trash. I was hoping you wouldn't turn out to be so, but I see, on short acquaintance, that you are.” I shoved the revolver back in its holster. “There. Now what do—”

He charged me with his head down like a billy goat butting a stump. It happened so sudden that it took me off guard. He smashed into me and the momentum knocked me backwards. I was just able to wrap my arms around his back and carry him over with me as I fell. As we hit the ground I whipped up my right boot and got it in his belly and gave a hard push. Even as heavy as he was, and I figured he outweighed me by ten pounds, he went flying off to the side and landed on his back in the dust. I jumped to my feet. He was scrambling, trying to get up. I let him get almost erect, and then I hit him flush in the face with a hard, driving right. I didn't care if he was a forty-year-old man. He and I were going to have to reach an understanding and damn quick or I was going to beat him to death.

The right hand knocked him straight backwards. He flailed his arms, trying to keep his balance and not go down. I stepped forward and hooked a left into the side of his head. It knocked him sideways. There was an ugly red splotch in the middle of his face and his nose was leaking blood. But even off balance he got his hands up and drew his right fist back, drawing it way back to throw a haymaker. I said, “That goes back much further you are going to have to put a postage stamp on it.” Then I hit him two quick left jabs, rocking him back on his heels, and then hit him a hard, jolting right on the jaw. He dropped down to his knees and then fell over on his side.

I wasn't particularly proud of myself. He wasn't much of a fighter. I could tell from his style that he liked to grab on to somebody and then wrestle around in the dirt and use his strength and size. Well, I'd quit doing that in grammar school.

I said, “Get up, Jordan.”

He was trying to push himself up with his arms, but he was still a little woozy. I reached down, got him by the shirt collar with both hands, and dragged him to his feet. He was still unsteady, so I give him a good shaking. I said, “Jordan. Jordan! Jordan, look at me!”

He shook his head as if to clear it, then slowly raised his hand and touched his face, and then looked at the blood on his hand. He said, “Fuckin' son'bitch, gonna kill yore ass.” He mumbled it, but I heard it plain. I let go of his collar with my right hand and ripped an uppercut into his belly just below his ribs. The blow almost lifted him off his feet. He went, “Hooooooo,” and fell backwards, his collar jerking out of the hold I still had on him with my left hand. He landed on his back, struggling for breath. I stood over him watching him gasp and heave. I was patient. I knew it'd be a moment or two before he could get his breath back.

Finally his breathing got somewhere near normal, and he struggled up on one elbow and then sat up. One of his eyes was starting to close and his nose was bleeding worse. Every lick I'd hit him had raised a lump. I squatted down where we could be eye to eye. I said, “You just threatened to kill me. You want to try it here and now?”

He didn't answer, just sat there panting, one arm resting over a knee. I noticed he'd lost his revolver. It was laying in the dust about five yards back of him. I also noticed his horse had run off. It hadn't gone far, just a few yards off the wagon track and into some tall grass, where it was grazing. My horse was standing where I'd left him.

I said, “Jordan, I asked you a question. You threatened to kill me. I'm not planning on letting that pass. You look like a bushwhacker to me, and I don't plan on riding around this country looking over my shoulder. You want to settle it here and now?”

He made a little surrender move with his hand. He said, lowly, “Didn't mean it. I was mad as hell. I ain't no bushwhacker. I jest got mad about my boy Shay and what yore brother tol' him.”

“Happens I heard a different kind of story. And it happens I know my brother Norris a hell of a lot better than you or your son. Norris don't threaten. That ain't his style. And he wouldn't threaten to run anybody out of the country. The way I heard it was your boy, Shay, come in my brother's office, uninvited, and showed him that revolver he likes to flash around so well, and told Norris there was more than one way to settle a land dispute.”

He looked up at me. He was still breathing hard. “Then why would the boy come and tell me what he done for? I was goin' in to see yore brother Norris when I seen you coming out of town. I know you be the boss. I thought I'd take it up with you.”

“You got a damn strange way of going about things. I don't know where you're from, Jordan, but folks around here don't take to having their kin bad-mouthed and they don't take to a lot of yelling and threats. Now, I don't know why Shay told you what he did, but I know what Norris, said passed in that office. So far nothing has come of it but a scuffle between me and you. But if it gets to picking up speed it might get out of hand. You understand what I'm saying?”

He put his jaw in his hand and worked it back and forth for a minute. “Maybe Shay overtol' it. He puts on the dog ever' once in a while.”

I started to say, “Maybe Shay lied,” but I didn't. You've got to leave a man a little pride. You push his face in the dirt too hard and he'll never be clean with you. I said, “The matter is going to court. We're satisfied to let a judge rule.”

He worked his jaw again. “I'm willin' to let it be over. You hit mighty hard, Mister Williams.”

I stood up. “Then let's let it be at an end. I've got to leave the county for a few days, and I'd like to know there ain't going to be no flare-ups about this. My youngest brother Ben tends to be a hothead. I'd hate to have any trouble start while I'm gone.”

He pushed off the ground and got to his feet. “Suits me,” he said.

I pointed. “Your revolver is back behind you. I'll catch up your horse.”

I deliberately turned my back on him, knowing he was picking up his pistol, and walked to my horse and mounted. Still without looking back, I rode over to his horse, caught up the reins, and took him back to Rex Jordan. He took the reins without a word. He hadn't apologized for badmouthing my family, so I was damned if I'd say I was sorry for punching his face in. But I said, “Your brother . . . I ain't ever met him.”

He swung into the saddle. “Luther? He's younger than me. By a good ten years.”

“I ain't seen him around.”

Jordan said, “He just got outta jail. Down in Mexico. Been kind of enjoyin' life. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said. I nodded and turned my horse for home. I wasn't all that pleased to hear that he had the kind of brother could get himself thrown in jail in Mexico. But by the same token I couldn't make too much out of it because Norris had done the same thing. But I somehow doubted it was for the same reason.

I rode along, flexing my right hand. I'd hurt it on Jordan's hard head when I'd hit him on the side of the jaw. The first time I'd hit him his hat had flown off and I could see he was mostly bald on top. But I didn't figure it was on account of age. Some men I had known went bald in their early thirties. And there wasn't nothing old about Jordan's strength. I'd felt it when he'd charged me, butting me in the chest and trying to get his arms around me to squeeze me like a vise. You didn't want a man like that to get too close to you. Fortunately, my arms were long enough to hold him off.

But even though we'd both said the matter was settled, I was still troubled. The family was trash. I didn't like to go around calling people a name like that, but I didn't know any other that fit.

And then there was the brother, Luther. I didn't know anything about him, but I did hate to be going off for such a long time with an ex-resident of a Mexican jail lined up on the side opposite my family.

But then, we weren't exactly defenseless. Ben was worth any four men they could bring up against him, and at least half of our dozen regular hired hands could use a gun to some good effect. And there was still Buttercup and his shoulder-held cannon. He was no bigger than a dried frog, and yet able to make a shot at 500 yards that few men half his age would attempt, much less hope to make a success.

And there was Lew Vara to keep an eye on the situation.

I decided to hell with it. If a man set out to worry about all the possible trouble that could come his way, he'd never get anything done but worry. Still, I couldn't help but think that Howard had a hell of a nerve asking for his little errand at such a time. I glanced at the sun and kicked the sorrel into a lope. I might still make it in time for lunch, though I didn't know how I was going to explain my skinned knuckles to Nora. I couldn't tell her the truth because it would just cause her to worry and to also give me a good scolding for not handling things in a more civilized manner. Nora was never going to learn that there were some people and some situations that just did not respond to a civilized approach. All they did was take it for a sign of weakness.

I didn't get home for lunch with Nora on account of I swung by the big house to have a word with Ray Hays. I knew the men would be in for the noon meal because they were working close to headquarters, holding the “cut,” the steers we'd be shipping, in a little pasture right up next to the barns.

As I rode up toward the house I spied Hays lallygagging around the bunkhouse, and I rode up and dismounted. Hays said, “Hell, here's the boss. What have you got to say for yourself there, Mister Williams?”

I said, “Let's me and you walk off a little ways and have a talk.”

It kind of alarmed him at first, but when I assured him I wasn't about to fire him, not that he didn't deserve it, he relaxed a bit. Ray was a slightly built man with sandy hair and a pleasant, open face. You could josh him and you could kid him so long as you were his friend. If you weren't, it was not a smart thing to push him too far. We walked along and Hays said, “Boy, Boss, feel that fall air? Don't it make the sap just rise in yore tree? Boy, howdy! This is my kind of weather.”

I looked sideways at him and shook my head. Ray was from west Texas, and out there mid-October meant crisp, cool weather. The fact that it still felt like August must have gotten past him somehow. But that was the way he thought. It was October, it was fall, and it was time to howl.

He said, “Can't wait fer Saturday night. Hear Miss Maybelle has got some new girls. Ah'm goin' in an' have me a ripsnorter of a time. If I don't feel like I need a doctor Sunday morning ah'm gonna feel like I been cheated.”

We'd walked far enough away from the other cowboys hanging around the door of the bunkhouse so we couldn't be overheard. I stopped us. I said, “Hays, me and you are fixing to take us a little trip horseback. Cross-country. Pick you out a good traveling horse, a good stayer, because we're going a pretty good piece. We'll be leaving the ranch right after the noon meal Friday. Day after tomorrow. We'll be gone the better part of two weeks.”

His jaw was hanging open. “What about Saturday night?”

“Oh, there'll still be a Saturday night. Only thing is that me and you will be spending it out on the prairie somewhere.”

“Aw, hell, Boss . . . I was countin' on goin' in to Miss Maybelle's place Saturday night and washin' off a little of this hard work.”

I didn't pay him any mind. I said, “Now this is strictly between you and me. When you go to gathering up supplies and folks start asking you questions, you don't know nothing. All you're doing is what I told you to do. You understand that?”

“Yeah,” he said kind of listlessly.

“Pick out a good packhorse. I know we ain't got no regular packhorses, but do like that time I was headed for Del Rio. Get one that is solid and gentle and won't spook and that can keep up with us if we have to run. Get a big horse because it'll be carrying a pretty good load.”

Hays said, “Boss, you sure I'm the right one for this job? I mean—”

“Hush,” I said. “I may need a gun and I may need a steady man in a fight. You recommend anybody else outside of Ben?”

He sighed. He knew there was no way out. “I reckon not.” Then he suddenly brightened. “We wouldn't be headed for any hot spots, would we? Like Dallas or Houston or Galveston?”

“Might pass some along the way,” I said. “Doubt we'll have much time to frolic.”

“Well . . .” he said, looking dejected.

“I want you to go to the cooks and get some trail grub. Get a bunch of smoked beef and some cheese and as much bread or biscuits as won't go stale. And get a bunch of canned goods. And locate a ground sheet. And get several of them big canteens. You can spend Thursday morning getting it all rigged up. I'll tell Ben I got you busy at something else. And you don't want to forget your carbine or extra cartridges. Hell, you know what gear to pack. And what grub.”

“Where we goin'?” he asked.

“Why, Ray, I thought you'd be happier than this about the trip. You are always complaining about being stuck here on the ranch. Well, I'm giving you the chance to be stuck out on the prairie.”

“Yessir,” he said, but without much spirit.

“You get us all packed and ready and then eat with the crew. I'll come along about one o'clock and we'll take off. Understand?”

“Yessir. I'll get her done.”

That was Ray. He'd grouch and slouch for a little, but then, come Friday, he'd be as anxious to go as if it had been his own idea.

He said again, “Where we goin'?”

“Why Ray, you ought to know me well enough by now to have known that if I was going to answer that question I'd of answered it the first time.”

“So you ain't gonna tell me? Jest drag me off 'crost the prairie no idea where ah'm bound for?”

“No, I'm not going to tell you. And the reason I'm not going to tell you is because you would probably tell somebody else and I don't want anybody else to know.”

“Awww, Boss,” he said, “I ain't gonna tell nobody else.”

I started back toward my horse. “I know you're not because you ain't got anything to tell anybody.”

I mounted up, leaving a disgruntled Ray Hays in my dust, and rode home. I put the sorrel up, unsaddling him and turning him into the corral. I wasn't through work for the day, but I wanted him to start getting rested up for the work he had ahead.

I was too late to eat with Nora, but she laid me out a meal of cold beef and tomatoes and onions with some light bread. She made a fresh pot of coffee and sat down to have a cup with me. I told her what I'd been up to.

“Friday, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, busy eating. “I'll have lunch with you and then take off.”

“Must you be gone all that time?”

I shrugged. “If I do it the way Howard wants. Hell, it's a long ways. He's got a calendar. I can't show back up here in a week and claim we just kind of pushed the horses a bit.”

She sighed. “It's just such a long time.” She looked up at me. “Now that I've gotten used to sleeping with you I can't sleep by myself as good.”

“Why don't you go in and stay with your parents? You know how much your mama and Lonnie enjoy having J.D. to make over.”

“Yes, and they just spoil him rotten. What happened to your knuckles?”

I gave them a quick glance. “I barked them on some kegs in the back of your daddy's store. Dark back in that part. I was looking for the right size. Anyway, I hate the idea of you staying out here by yourself all that time. I know you got Juanita, but she ain't no company. Go in and stay with your folks. It would make me feel better.”

“Did you drop a keg on your knuckles?” She reached up and took hold of my right hand. “This hand is swollen. Justa, have you been fighting?”

“Nora, one of the kegs got loose and slid around and slammed my hand against another one. A keg of nails weighs a ton. What's the matter with you? Who the hell would I get in a fight with?”

She gave me her look that said she knew something wasn't quite right, but since she couldn't prove it she'd let it go ... this time. But don't figure to keep on getting away with these stunts, mister.

I said, “Hell, honey, I've got to go off for a good long time. Let's don't have no unpleasantness at a time like this.”

She gave me an appraising look but, since she didn't have proof, she had to say, “You're right. I swear, I'm turning into a worse nag than my mother. But Justa, you have to admit I never know what you are liable to get into next.”

I gave her a half smile and shook my head. “You just can't quit being the schoolteacher, can you? Of course if you want to act like a schoolteacher, I wouldn't mind staying after school and dusting your erasers.”

She blushed. “Justa, it's the middle of the day. You ought not to talk like that.”

I reached under the table and got my hand on the inside of her thigh. “What kind of talk? I'm just talking about dusting your erasers.”

“You know very well what you meant. And get your hand out of there.”

“I've got to get me enough to hold me for the next two weeks. That's going to take a lot. Reckon we could start now?”

“Justa, you are getting awful! Do you want Juanita to hear us? My heavens!”

“Juanita can't even speak English, much less understand this kind of talk. But if you're worried, we could go out into the barn.”

Now she did blush. She put her hand to her cheek and said, “Justa Williams, what has come over you? Do you hear yourself talking? My heavens above!”

Of course I was just joking, knowing I didn't have no more chance than a Catholic fish at Friday night supper. Not that Nora wasn't nearly more than I could handle when we got right down to it, but she no longer was that sassy girl I used to court now she was a wife and a mother. And wives and mothers didn't fuck in the daytime, especially if there was anybody else in the house.

She ran me off pretty promptly and I got a different horse, a little bay mare, and went out and worked the rest of the afternoon with Harley getting the herds shaped up for the final cut. After that I came home just about dark, took me a cold shower in my little stall outside by the barn, and then had supper with Nora while J.D. watched and drooled over a piece of hard candy he didn't have the teeth to bite with.

After supper I went up for our usual drink and meeting. Dad was up and appeared to be feeling good. Looking at Howard, I told my brothers that if they had anything to get settled with me they'd better get it done then or the next night because I was leaving on a long trip Friday afternoon. I said, still looking at Howard, “And I mean a loooong trip. Maybe three weeks.” Howard wouldn't meet my eye. Instead he leaned over to spit tobacco juice in a spittoon. I didn't blame him. If I was doing to him what he was doing to me, I couldn't face him either.

Ben said, “Three weeks! Where the hell are you going?”

Norris gave me a little half smile. He said, “I hope you're back when that land trial with the Jordans comes up.”

I said, “No court date been set yet, Norris. I saw Huggins three or four days ago.”

Jake Huggins was our lawyer. He didn't live in Blessing, but business brought him down often enough that we stayed in close touch.

Ben said, “Where the hell are you going?”

“North,” I said shortly.

“What for?”

I looked at Howard again. I said, “I'm going to investigate the sawmill business.”

“Sawmill? We going to set up a sawmill? Hell, I can't see us doing that. What the hell do we need with a sawmill? Why don't we stick to what we know, cattle and horses?”

I said, “It's Howard's idea.”

The old man cleared his throat. He said, “One of you boys want to hand me another drink? That first one was so weak I didn't know whether to swaller it or wash my hands in it.”

Ben looked over at me. I shrugged. While he took the old man a watered drink I said, “Norris, we have given Huggins every available paper we have, haven't we? Every title, every grant, no matter how old?”

Norris said, “I'm not a lawyer, but we've got proof about four times over that we own that land. And that's not counting the law of constant usage.”

Ben said, “Hell, Justa, there's gonna be a hell of a horse sale in San Antonio in two weeks. Listen, we've got to have some new blood. They are going to have some damn good horses there. Stock from clean up to Kentucky and Tennessee. Hell!”

I said, “Then go to San Antonio and buy some new breeding stock. I never told you you couldn't.”

His face lit up. “Now you're talking, big brother. What kind of money I got to work with?”

I looked at Howard, but said to Norris, “Oh, anything up to twenty-five thousand dollars. Norris can set it some way on the books so it'll look like it's benefiting the company.”

Ben gave me a puzzled look. “What the hell are you talking about? Of course it will be benefiting the company. It'll improve the horse herd, and the horses are part of the ranch, and the ranch is part of this here company Norris is always talking about, ain't it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Twenty-five thousand be enough?”

“Lord, yes,” he said. “I wasn't hoping for anything like that.”

Howard cleared his throat again and said, “Appears to me that one of my sons is tryin' to make a point without comin' right out and sayin' it.”

Of course it went right over Norris and Ben's heads.

Ben looked at Howard and then at me. He said, “What the hell's going on here?”

I said, “Ben, I'm taking Ray Hays with me.”

“Naw,” he said. “Hell, Justa, I need Ray in San Antonio with me to look at that horseflesh.”

I said, “You can get drunk enough on your own. You don't need Ray Hays to help you run around them San Antonio
cantinas
and whorehouses. By the way, tell him to take some cold-weather clothes. I just told him we were heading north. I didn't say how far.”

“Well, how far?”

I shrugged. “Till we find somebody in the sawmill industry we're interested in.” I changed the subject before anyone could say anything. “I ran into Rex Jordan this afternoon. And I mean I literally ran into him.” Without making any more out of it than had to be told, I described what had happened. “So I want to be damn sure that we don't give them any kind of provocation. Stay clear of the whole family. And if you can't avoid them, walk as lightly as you can.”

Norris had been about to come out of his chair ever since I'd told the part about Rex saying that Norris had threatened Shay. He waited until I'd finished, but then he said, “Why that lying little punk! If there was any bullyboy tactics they were on his part! I've a good mind to see Jordan on the street and straighten him out about the matter.”