Shadow on the Land (20 page)

“I wouldn't be surprised if some of John Stevens's lightning struck me,” Lee said ruefully.

“He didn't get anywhere trying to hurry you, so he's decided to give you the time you need. But if you've judged the girl wrong, he'll have your scalp. Right now he's gone East, and I don't look for him back for a month or so. Meanwhile, I've got a job for you.”

“More horse buying?”

“No. This fits into one of the original assignments Stevens gave you. That's why I asked if you'd picked up any sign of Jepson or Boston Bull. I think it's more of their work, but if they're as slick as they were on the dynamite job, they won't leave any loose ends for you to pry up.” Porter put down his fork, and sat back. “There is this difference, Lee, and it's why I want you to get started in the morning. They're in the middle of their cussedness, and I think you'll move in just in time to split it down the back. We've got our camps set up now, our wagon roads built, our commissary depots established, and we're ready to build railroad. To do that, we've got to furnish meat to a lot of men. We're driving the cattle we've bought to our butchering stations along the rim, and hauling the fresh meat down to the camps. We've been handling about eight thousand pounds of dressed beef a day.” He gestured angrily. “That gives our enemies a chance to make plenty of trouble, which they're doing. Two days ago we had a herd scattered all over Shaniko Flat.”

“Any clues?”

Porter shook his head. “None. The boys were holding the cattle just above Cow Cañon when a bunch rode in, shooting and yelling, and the next thing they knew those cows took off for the John Day River. Now your job, Lee, is with our camp on the U'Rens's place. The men are Austrians, and they're eating a lot of meat. Lately they've got finicky. They won't eat front quarters. We trade the fronts and hinds back and forth between the camps, so all of them get a fair division, but these Austrians think a cow is made up of all hinds.”

“Austrians don't have much meat in the old country,” Lee said thoughtfully. “It might be just a prejudice they've worked up.”

“I don't think so. There's a man named Franz, who seems to be the ringleader of the agitation. He doesn't get any better wages than the rest, but several times he's sat in on poker games with some American teamsters and he's had a pocketful of money. He's one of the few who talk good English, and he likes to show off before the Americans. You find out where he gets his money. I want you and Magoon to take a load of beef down tomorrow. It will be all fronts, because they rejected a load yesterday and got pretty nasty about it. Before you're back on the rim, you'll see why I think there's something more to it than just a prejudice.”

Lee's grin was quick and wide, and an acceptance of the challenge. “We'll take the beef down,” he said.

Lee and Highpockets left Madras that evening, rode north through Lyle Gap and up Cow Cañon, and reined into the butchering station before dawn.

“You're just looking for a chance to grab trouble by the tail,” the teamster growled who usually delivered the meat. “Franz is a tough one . . . the kind that's born mean. Nobody down there can lick him, and he's got the rest of the Austrians scared to hell 'n' back.”

“We'll make out,” Lee said. “Ready to roll?”

“All set.” The butcher patted a canvas-covered quarter of beef. “Lots of good meat here. Dunno why them Austrians are so damned particular.”

Highpockets climbed into the seat, and Lee stepped up beside him, a Winchester between his knees. They followed the rim around Big Cove, the early morning air cold and still and touched with the promise of fall, the cañon slowly emerging from purple shadow as the sun rose.

Here, the cañon of the Deschutes was wider, the walls less precipitous. Here and there, rimrock stood sheer and steep above the cañon, but in most places the rim broke off in rounded complacency, evidence of Nature's erosive power where a soft earth gave in to its urgings. The wagon reached the bottom, and rolled on across the nearly level cañon floor. The new grade lay along the river, the earth raw and fresh where men and horses and scrapers had ruthlessly moved it from its centuries-old resting place.

Turning left, Highpockets drove along the grade, the camp within sight of them. Men were idling along the river, and Lee, missing no detail of the scene before them, said: “Nobody's working. They're waiting for this meat wagon, and they're cocked for trouble.”

“What's our play?”

“You stay in the seat. Keep the Winchester handy. If Johnson Porter called it right, I'll have to lick hell out of this Franz, and I don't want to get slugged from the back while I'm doing it.”

The Austrians had seen the wagon, and were gathering in a solid crowd in front of the cook shack. Highpockets turned off the grade, and pulled up in front of the crowd. “'Morning, gents,” Lee said, and climbed down.

Forty or fifty men were in the bunch, and at the moment Lee couldn't get his eyes on Franz. None of them spoke and none of them moved. Lee had years before developed the ability to size up a crowd like this, and he caught its mood before he reached the rear of the wagon. Anger had built to a man-eating height. If it once broke loose into full violence, Lee and Highpockets would not get out of camp alive. The trick was to single Franz out and settle this individually—a good trick, Lee thought, if he could do it.

Stepping to the rear of the wagon, Lee threw the canvas away from the meat. “You boys waiting to get fed before you start to work?” he asked cheerfully.

No one answered. Lee spotted a man he took for Franz, a squat, great-shouldered figure in the front row. A drooping, yellow mustache covered much of his mouth; his eyes were small and black and without humor. Judging by the way the others covertly watched him, he was their accepted leader, and they were waiting for his orders.

Pulling one of the beef quarters from the wagon, Lee said: “Here's meat, boys. Get your bellies full and go to work.” He gripped the quarter and swung it directly at the squat man. “Take it in, feller.”

Franz jumped back, letting the beef fall into the dirt. Anger brought a nervous twitch to the right side of his mouth. He said sourly: “I'm Franz. I talk for these men. We won't work unless we get hinds.”

“Every cow has two hind quarters and two front quarters,” Lee said patiently, as if he were explaining a simple problem to a child. “It wouldn't be right to give one camp all the hinds and make the other boys eat all the fronts.”

“To hell with the other camps. We're eating hinds.” Franz said something in his native tongue to the other men, and they nodded eagerly. “You see?” Franz brought his little eyes back to Lee. “You give us hinds.”

Lee stepped around the wagon until he was within a pace of Franz. He said with cool firmness: “You had hinds last time. Pick up that quarter and pack it inside.”

“You try making me pack that meat in,” Franz said, the nervous twitch in his mouth twisting the right side of his face into an ugly wickedness, “and I'll kick your guts to pieces.”

Swiftly and without warning, Lee was on the man, fists sledging his head on one side and then the other, and Franz went back into the knot of graders behind him. They fell away, surprised at this unexpected audacity. Lee kept on Franz, fists sinking into the hard muscles of his stomach and driving wind from him. He brought his attack back to the Austrian's head and knocked him off his feet with a piledriving right that caught Franz flushly on the point of his wide chin.

“Stand clear, you dad-burned coyotes!” Highpockets yelled, and fired a shot.

The crowd fell back. Lee heard the rumble of anger break out of them, but he had no time to see what had happened. He understood men like Franz; he knew what the Austrian would have done if it had not been for the suddenness of his attack. He dropped upon Franz, hard, knees in the squat man's ribs. He heard the
snap
of bone, the
hiss
of violently expelled air. He hit the man on the side of the head, and then on the other, and, seeing that most of the fight was out of him, crawled off and rolled the almost inert body over.

“You ready to pick that quarter up yet?” Lee demanded.

“No, damn you,” Franz muttered, and arched his back.

Lee came astride the Austrian, his full weight against the small of Franz's back, and Franz fell flat. Lee grabbed a handful of the man's hair, shoved his face into the dirt, and twisted it in gusty violence. He jerked the squat man's face up from the dirt, still by the hair, and asked: “You want to pack meat now?”

Franz blew out a mouthful of dust, pulled a painful breath back into his tortured lungs, and muttered: “
Ja
. I'll do it.”

Lee stood up, still watchful, while Franz labored to his feet, and wiped a shirt sleeve across his bloody, dusty face.

There was no movement now from the crowd. Their man had been licked, and fight had gone from them. Stooping, Franz picked up the beef and carried it into the cook shack.

Lee followed him closely. When they came out, he asked: “Who paid you to start this trouble?”

“Nobody,” Franz muttered.

“You're lying.” Lee raised a fist and took a step toward Franz.

“Bull . . . they call him,” Franz said quickly. “Boston Bull. Three hundred dollars I got to make the meat trouble.”

“All right, Franz. You're done on the Oregon Trunk. Start up the hill.”

For a moment Franz made no move. He stood with his shoulders hunched forward, blood dripping from a cut in his right cheek, one eye closed, the other gleaming in a keen wickedness. He said thickly: “I'm done on the Oregon Trunk, but not with you.” He swung away and started down the grade.

Lee returned to the wagon. “All right, boys,” he said casually. “I guess you'll eat fronts.” He pulled another quarter from the wagon, and handed it to a man who took it without a word and carried it inside. When the wagon was empty, Lee said: “You'll get hinds next time, boys.” He climbed up beside Highpockets. “Let's roll.”

Franz had started up the road when the wagon passed him. Highpockets said with somber unease: “Those boys'll eat fronts all right, but you just made another enemy who likes you about the same as Boston Bull does.”

Lee said, fishing his pipe from his pocket: “Franz said Bull gave him three hundred dollars to kick this mess up. I guess that gives me something to talk about when I find Bull.”

Chapter Sixteen

D
ecember, and the chill, clear days of fall had given way to winter. The last of November had been entirely wicked, with an early snow in the mountains and a Chinook that had created an unprecedented disturbance in the even-flowing Deschutes. Rising ten feet in twenty-four hours, it became a mud-brown, rampaging torrent. Two of the Twohy Brothers' camps were swept away. One of the Porter Brothers' camps, located on higher ground, was surrounded by water and temporarily deserted because it was impossible to get supplies to it.

The roads across Shaniko Flats and into the cañon were turned into sticky, treacherous seas of liquid gumbo, tenaciously gripping the wheels of loaded wagons, forcing teamsters to put on six horses instead of four. One heavy outfit pulled into the Oregon Trunk camp on the U'Rens's place with thirty-two head of horses in harness. Then the rains were over, and it froze, and the gumbo roads became as hard as pavement.

It had been a good fall until the rains came, and time had accelerated the race rather than retarded it. The Oregon Trunk relocated its line to the west side from Mile Twenty-Three to the neighborhood of Sherars Bridge. The original survey had called for a crossing to the east side at Mile Twenty-Three and back at Mile Thirty-Eight and a tunneling of Horseshoe Bend. Now, with the relocation, the tunnel was avoided, and Horseshoe Bend was no longer a point in conflict.

John Stevens, making a quick trip into central Oregon, talked briefly with Lee in Madras. “Our difficulty,” he said, “if we have any, will be around Mile Seventy-Five where we cross below the mouth of Trout Creek. They opened the road across the Girt place with another injunction, but that isn't important now.” He looked at Lee sharply then. “Our other trouble spot is Trail Crossing. What about the Racine girl?”

“She'll come to me when she's ready to deal,” Lee said.

“You don't build a railroad waiting for people to come to you,” Stevens said with biting irony.

“I'll see her,” Lee promised. He got up and paced to the window. It had snowed a full six inches that morning, had stopped, and now, in mid-afternoon, it had started again, a few flakes circling uneasily in the air before coming to rest. Lee watched them for a moment, feeling Stevens's eyes upon him, the impatience that was building in the man. Turning, he said soberly: “I know you think I'm playing this wrong, but I'm positive of one thing. Hanna Racine will deal with us a lot sooner if we don't push her.”

“I've let you alone because you seem to understand the situation, Dawes,” Stevens said, “but the way things are shaping up, we can't wait much longer. We've started work at Trail Crossing, so the Harriman people can't hurt us unless”—he leveled a finger at Lee—“the Racine girl sells to them and not to us.”

Lee, thinking of Hanna's sense of high integrity, said with complete confidence: “She won't. You can count on it.”

Lee sat there after Stevens had left for Bend, patiently nursing his pipe, long legs stretched in front of him, a slack-muscled, tall man from whom the love of fighting had gone. Something was missing in him, had been missing since that afternoon in Grass Valley when he'd seen Quinn drive in with Deborah beside him. It was as if a fire had gone out, the flame and warmth gone, the gray ashes left.

Strangely, as so many times these last three months, his mind turned to Hanna, and feeling stirred in him. The admiration he had felt for her when they had talked on the
Inland Belle
had increased as he had come to know her better, and the thought of her never failed to bring its calm assurance. It was strange, he told himself, for he had always picked the ardent women, the turbulent ones, and Hanna was not one of them. But the past years had been mostly wasted years, and a man could not go on forever wasting them. He had sensed in Hanna depths no man had explored, capacities that even she did not know existed in her.