Collection 1988 - Lonigan (v5.0) (17 page)

“Time!” Weaver's voice boomed out over the arena. “Bart Luby ties his calf in the record-breaking time for this show of ten and nine-tenths seconds!”

Cheers swept the arena, and Rowdy Horn felt something go sick inside of him. He heard his name called, and he twisted in the saddle.

“Cass!” he yelled. “Piggin' strings! Quick!”

Webster sprang as if stuck with a pin and thrust some piggin' strings in Rowdy's fingers. At the same instant, Rowdy tossed the frayed strings to the other contestant.

“Look!” he yelped.

He saw his calf leave the chute with a bound and take off down the arena like a bolt. Silverside saw it go and was in a dead run, heading down the arena. Rowdy's rope whirled and shot out, and he left the saddle with a leap, swept the calf from its feet and down deftly, swiftly. His heart pounding and the dust swirling in his nostrils, he made his tie and sprang free, arm uplifted!

Dead silence held the arena, and then, his voice wild with excitement, Weaver announced:

“Folks! Rowdy Horn, ridin' the great Silverside, wins the calf ropin' with the record time of ten and eight-tenths seconds!”

Cheers boomed across the arena, and Rowdy swung into the saddle and trotted his horse across to the judges' stand. His great horse reared high, and Rowdy's hat swung wide, acknowledging the cheers. Then, to the martial music of the band, Silverside dance-stepped across the arena to accompanying cheers. Then Rowdy turned the horse and rode him back to the chutes.

The memory of those frayed piggin' strings was in his mind. There was only one time it could have been done, hastily but deftly, and obviously planned for, and that had been while he was exchanging his few words with the sheriff.

Bart Luby had been sitting his horse, awaiting his signal, right beside Silverside!

Swift work, but it could have been done, for several minutes must have elapsed before Rowdy had returned to his horse. Only the sudden feel of the frayed place by his lips had saved him, for a snapped piggin' string would have meant too much loss of time.

He swung down and approached the tight little circle of men—Sheriff Ben Wells, Cass Webster, Tony Sandoval, Neil Rice, and others. And in the center of them, pale and defiant, his eyes hard with hatred, was Bart Luby.

Rowdy shoved through the crowd. “All right, blast you!” he flared. “Now you can have that beatin'!”

“Hold it, Horn!” Wells said sternly. “Step back now! This is in my hands!”

“All this talk is foolishness!” Luby declared harshly. “Why would I do a thing like that? I don't care what Webster says, I never touched those piggin' strings!”

“Same thing you done at White Rock!” Webster said flatly. “And you say I'm a liar, Bart Luby, and you've me to whip!”

Wells turned on him, scowling.

“Will you shut up!” he said testily. “That piggin' string deal was bad enough, but I'm arrestin' Luby for fraud, and for rustlin'.”

“What?” Luby's face paled. “What are you talkin' about?”

“What I said,” Ben Wells replied calmly. “This here hombre”—he gestured to Rice—“found Tom Slater's true will hid in a cabinet in the old Slash Bar ranch house. He also found a document there that had its seal removed. Meantime, I'd sent a couple of deputies with a posse back to hunt for that valley Rowdy told us about. They hit the jackpot and rounded up Jack Rollick and two of his boys. Rollick confessed that he helped you tote that body over to the Slash Bar, Luby, to dump it on Horn. Besides that, when I jugged Horn, I searched him, and found what he had plumb forgot—Rollick's tallybook showin' he rustled cows he'd sold through you and to you, even tellin' about the percentage he took off whenever you tipped him to good steals.”

“It's all a pack of lies,” Luby said, but his protest lacked emphasis.

“A search warrant got us into your house while you was down here,” Wells went on remorselessly, “and we scared up that fake deed. Rice, here, he showed me how that seal was removed from one paper and used on the other. He also showed how the will you had was actually an old letter to you from Slater, but changed so to make it a will. You can tell by the creases where words were changed and added on.”

Rowdy Horn looked up and saw Jenny Welman standing on the edge of the crowd, her lips parted. She stared at Luby, horrified, then at Rowdy. Abruptly, she turned and fled.

Horn had no wish to hear more. He was cleared now. Rice caught his eye.

“Boss,” he said, “I did what I thought was right. You were gone, so I acted on my own.”

“Fine,” Rowdy said, “I'm glad you did.” His eyes were straying, searching for the face he wanted. “You've got your job with me as long as you want it.”

Vaho Rainey walked out from the stables, leading her palomino. Rowdy walked past Rice and stopped her. For an instant, their eyes held.

“Honey,” he said then, “how many sheep would I have to swap Cleetus for you?”

She laughed. “He'd probably give you sheep to be rid of me. He loves me, I know, but now that I'm a young lady, I think I worry him.”

“Maybe you wouldn't want to marry a cowman, even one with a ranch,” he suggested.

“Why, Rowdy!” She laughed suddenly, her eyes dancing. “We've been engaged, or practically engaged, ever since we got Silverside!”

“What?” He stared at her. “What do you mean?”

She blushed, but her eyes were happy. “Why, I told Cochino that it was the custom of your people for the bride to bring a pony to her husband, and only the finest pony would do. That was what he was saying by the stables this morning. He said all he wanted in return for the horse, which he had actually given me to give you, anyway, was for you to take good care of your squaw!”

He chuckled. “Why, I reckon that's a good deal,” he said whimsically. “The cheapest durned horse I ever got!”

AUTHOR'S NOTE

T
OUGH
M
EN

Nobody will ever know how many people went west and just disappeared. Some were killed in Indian attacks; others died of thirst or were killed in stampedes or other accidents. The day-to-day work was rough and hard, and often a man was working alone. If hurt, he had to treat his injuries himself and survive if he could. Many a lonely grave beside the trail carries a marker from which the weather has long wiped out the name.

Relatives and friends in the east waited anxiously for letters that never came. Often, a woman thought herself deserted when it was only the west itself. That wild country had a way of absorbing people and leaving nothing to mark their passing. There were so many ways a man could die.

Sometimes, like Jim Drew in this story, they were simply too tough to kill.

In my novel Conagher somebody asks a stage driver if Conagher is a gunfighter, and his reply is, “No, but he's the kind the gunfighters leave alone, if they're smart.”

There were many such men. They were not peace officers, they were not outlaws or gamblers, and they were not liable to be noticed by newspapers or historians. They were simply tough, game men who went about the business of existing. One such was Kirk Jordan, who ran gunfighter Billy Brooks out of Dodge; another was Colonel Frank North, of the Pawnee Battalion, known as perhaps the finest pistol shot of them all, but he never got into fights. I knew an old Indian in Arizona who was said to be past ninety (I never knew his actual age, but his face looked old enough to have worn out two bodies) who could shoot the heads off Mexican quail. On several occasions when he needed quail for eating I have seen him kill two and three at a time.

He was not known as a gunfighter (although reputed to have killed several men) and would have disdained such a reputation.

P
ARDNER FROM THE
R
IO

T
ANDY THAYER RODE up the river trail in the late afternoon, a tall young man with sand-colored hair, astride a gray horse. He drew rein before he reached the water hole, and looked carefully around as though searching for something missing from the terrain.

Tandy Thayer was slightly stooped as a man often becomes after long hours and years in the saddle, and his eyes had that steady, slow look of a man who knows his own mind and his own strength.

Turning in the saddle he studied the bare, burned red rock with a little frown gathering between his eyes. Here was where old man Drew's ranch should be, right on this spot. There was the water hole, and to the right, and not far distant, was the roar of the river. High upon the mountain to his left was that jagged streak of white rock pointing like an arrow to this place.

All the signs were right. The painstaking description had accounted for every foot of the trail until now. It had even accounted for every natural landmark here. Only there was no barn, no corral, no ranch house, and no Jim Drew. Nor was there any evidence that any of those things had existed upon this spot.

Tandy swung down from the saddle and trailed the bridle reins. The gray started purposefully but not too anxiously toward the water hole and sank his muzzle into the limpid pool. Thayer was thirsty himself, but his mind was occupied now with a puzzle. He shoved his hat back from his homely, weather-worn face with a quick, characteristic gesture and began to look around.

He heard the horse approaching before it arrived, so he faced about, turning himself squarely toward the trail up which he had just ridden. Another rider. From where?

T
HE MAN WAS burly, a big man astride a powerful sorrel with a blazed face and three white stockings. His face was flat and swarthy, his eyes blue steel. He rode lopsided in the saddle with a careless cockiness that showed itself as well in the slant of his narrow-brimmed, flatcrowned hat.

“Howdy,” he said, and inspected Tandy with a wary, casual interest. “Ridin' through?”

“I reckon. Huntin' an hombre name of Jim Drew. Know him?”

“Guess not. Was he comin' through here?”

“He lived here. Right on this spot if I figure right.”

“Here?” The rider's voice was incredulous, but then he chuckled with a dry sound and his eyes glinted with what might have been malice. “Nobody ever lived here. You can see for yourself. Anyways, this here is Block T range, and they are mighty touchy folks. Me, I'd not ride it myself, only they know me.” He dug into his shirt pocket for the makings. “How'd you happen to pick this spot?”

“Drew gave me directions, and mighty near drew me a map. He mentioned the river, the water hole, that streak on the mountain, and a few other things.”

“Yeah?” The rider touched his tongue to the edge of the paper. “Must have slipped up somewheres along the trail. Nobody ever lived here in my time, and I've been around here more'n ten years. Closest house is the Block T, and that's six miles north of here. I live back down the country, myself.” He struck a match and lighted his cigarette. “I'll be riding on. Gettin' hungry.”

“You ride for the Block T?”

“No, I'm Kleinback. I own the K Bar. If you're over thataway drop by and set a while. I'm headed to see Bill Hofer, the hombre who ramrods the Block T.”

Tandy Thayer was a stubborn man, and it had been a long ride from Texas. Moreover, he had known Jim Drew long enough to know that Drew would never give wrong directions or invite him on a wild goose chase.

“That trail was plain as if he'd blazed it,” he muttered. “I'll just have a look around.”

He had his look around, for his pains, and over his fire as dusk gathered, he considered the problem. His eyes had already told him there was nothing to see. The cabin, corrals, and stable so painstakingly described were nowhere to be seen, nor was there any stock.

Hesitant as he was to pull out without finding Drew, he felt that his best bet would be to try to land a job as a rider for the Block T. He couldn't live on desert grass.

Thayer organized the shadow of a meal from what he carried in his saddlebags, then lighted a cigarette and leaned back against a boulder to study things out. Jim Drew was weatherbeaten and cantankerous, but he was also sure moving and painstaking. Despite Kleinback's statement, Tandy was sure Drew must be around somewhere.

Picking up another piece of mesquite, he tossed it on the fire. In the morning he would take a last look around. If this was the place Drew had meant, there would be some sign, surely.

Tandy had put out his hand for a stick and started to toss it, when he caught the motion in midair. Along the underside of that stick, his fingers had found a row of notches. Holding the mesquite close to the fire, he studied it.

Two notches, and then a space followed by another notch. As he stared at those notches, with the cuts still unweathered, his mind skipped back to a camp alongside the Rio Grande below San Marcial where he once had sat across a campfire and watched Jim Drew cutting just such notches as he talked. It had been a habit of the old rancher's, just as some men whittle and others doodle with pen or pencil.

So, then. He was not wrong, and Jim Drew
had
been here. But if he had been here, where was he now? And where were the ranch buildings? Why had Kleinback not known about him? Or had he known?

Tandy got swiftly to his feet, recalling something he had observed as he had ridden up, but which had made no impression at the time. It was the position of three clumps of mesquite. He strode to the nearest one and, grasping a branch, gave it a jerk. It came loose so suddenly he all but fell.

Bending over, he felt with his hand for the place from which the roots had come. There was loose dirt, but when he brushed it aside, his fingers found the round outline of a posthole!

G
RIMLY HE GOT to his feet and replaced the mesquite, tamping the dirt around it. There was something wrong here, mighty wrong. He picked up a few loose sticks and walked slowly back to the fire.