The Smoking Iron (10 page)

“An' Boxley?”

“He owns the Excel Ranch … bordering on the Katie. He's been sending riders over to help me when he could spare them. But they find my fences cut, and by the time they get a herd gathered it's likely to be driven off before they can take it to market.”

“Sounds,” said Dusty, “like you shore do need a man to take hold. My name's Morgan, ma'm. Most folks call me Dusty.”

She acknowledged his introduction with a nod, her thoughts still on the story she was telling. “I realized a month ago that I couldn't go on like dad wanted. It just isn't a job for a girl … or else I'm not cut out for it. And I wrote to an old friend in Colorado asking him to come and take hold. He was due on the stage from Marfa this morning. And … and …” Her voice broke suddenly.

Dusty nodded. “I know about the stage, Miss Katie. A rider come in with the news just before you drove into town. You reckon the passenger that was killed was your friend from Colorado?”

“He must have been. He wrote me a letter saying he'd be in on that stage. And I've been pinning all my hopes on him … just living and hanging on until he got here … and now …” She began to sob quietly.

Dusty ached to put his arm about her shoulders and tell her the truth. But he didn't. He clamped the lines between his knees and reached in his pocket for the cigarette papers and tobacco he had transferred from his shirt to Ben's when he exchanged clothing with the dead youth.

He concentrated on the job of rolling a cigarette, restively conscious of the girl beside him, shaken with disappointment and grief. There wasn't much a man could say to her. It wouldn't help to tell her she was just as well off with Ben Thurston dead. And if he told her what he knew about the stage hold-up, he'd have to explain why he was here like this.

He didn't want to do that. He didn't want her to ever know he was hiding from a posse. The thought of telling her about Rosa and the death of the Marfa sheriff brought beads of perspiration to his forehead. Right now, he felt like she was beginning to trust him … and it was a pretty wonderful feeling.

He got his cigarette rolled and thumbnailed a match to light it. Katie Rollins was beginning to get herself in hand. She sat up a little straighter and drew away from him, said in a choked voice, “I'm sorry. It's just that … I've been hoping for so much. And now it's no use. I'll have to sell the Katie. Though I promised Dad I never would.”

“A little thing like rustling,” said Dusty gently, “ain't no reason for sellin' a good ranch. If yore dad run it without trouble, it can be done again.”

“I'm afraid it's too late for that now. Men … the sort of riders I need … avoid the K T. Word's gotten around that it's run by a girl who's afraid to stand up against rustlers.”

“I ain't avoidin' the K T,” Dusty told her.

“But you can't stay.” Katie looked at him in astonishment. “I've explained why you can't.”

“Account of Lon Boxley?”

“Yes. I can't afford to antagonize him, even if you're not afraid of his gun.”

“He hasn't kept the rustlers off, has he? Hasn't helped you enough but what you're gettin' ready to sell the ranch?”

“He would … if I'd let him.” A flush crimsoned Katie's tanned cheeks but she met Dusty's inquiring gaze without flinching.

He said, “Wants to marry you, huh?”

“He hasn't asked me, but … I know he does.”

“He's ten years older'n you,” Dusty broke out hotly.

Katie met his outburst with a wan smile. “I'm not going to marry him,” she assured him. “Not even to save the Katie.”

“Let me take a hand in the game, ma'm.”

“You haven't explained how you came to be in Hermosa this morning … afoot.”

“Oh, that? My hawse had a accident down the road a piece. Rattler got him.”

“You're a fugitive, aren't you? Riding what men call the owlhoot trail?”

Dusty's jaw hardened. “Why do you guess that?”

“Most men are who come to Hermosa. And you … you seemed awfully ready with your gun. You would have killed Lon, wouldn't you? If I hadn't called out and stopped you?”

“He deserved killin'. Shootin' from behind.”

“He was crazy mad,” Katie conceded. “You'd knocked him down in front of me and it front of his men.”

“He had it comin'.”

“You frighten me,” said Katie simply, “when you look like you do now. As you looked when you drew on Lon. I don't see why men have to fight … kill each other,” she cried out wildly. “There's a lust for killing that gets into their blood. I've seen it here on the Border. Too much of it. That's why I forbade my riders to go armed.”

“An' got overrun by rustlers,” Dusty reminded her.

“All right. Sometimes I'm sorry. I avoided bloodshed that way. Perhaps I saved some man from turning into a killer.”

“But now there's bound to be killin'. No matter who takes over the ranch. The rustlers won't quit without bein' persuaded by lead now that they've got started.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Katie cried brokenly. “I just don't know. I wanted to do what was right. I wanted to run the ranch peacefully.”

“You picked the wrong place for that, I reckon. You'd best trade the K T for a farm back in Kansas.” There was lashing scorn in Dusty's voice.

Katie looked at him wonderingly. “You sound like all the other men who quit me.”

“Shore. I'd quit too.”

“But you offered to help me.”

“Because I thought you wanted a man that'd use his guns.”

“I do,” she said suddenly. “I'm through being fainthearted. I'll fight those rustlers back. I won't let them ruin the Katie.”

The sharp line of the rimrocks swung sharply to the left in front of them. At the same time, the line of cottonwoods marking the bank of the river swerved to the right in a great sweeping arc to form a wide spread between the river and the cliffs.

Katie Rollins said, “There it is,” quietly but with a tremor of pride in her young voice.

Dusty stared speechlessly ahead at the wide sweep of flat land lying before them. It was a rich, alluvial plain, perfectly flat and stretching ahead as far as the eye could see. Covered with luxuriant green grass and dotted with mesquite and catclaw, it looked more like pictures of an English meadow than anything Dusty Morgan had ever seen or dreamed of seeing hi the West. The road cut straight ahead through the rich grass, and the palominos lifted their heads and snorted as though to welcome the sight and smell of the unbelievably rich pasture land.

Dusty said, “It's like ridin' into paradise outta hell, beggin' yore pardon, Miss Katie.” His voice was low and awed.

Katie nodded, her brown eyes shining mistily. “I feel the same way. Even now. After living here all my life. Do you see why I don't want to give up the Katie?” she demanded fiercely.

“Any man'd sell his soul for a place like this, ma'm.” Dusty's eyes were going hungrily from side to side, feasting themselves on the sight of sleek, stocky, steers grazing knee-deep in the rich herbage.

“It's a strip eighteen miles long and eight miles in width at the widest part. There's a little over sixty sections in all. The whole flat used to be the river bed, dad said, thousands of years ago. Then the river cut the course it now follows. There are more than three hundred springs, all together, and they never dry up. It stays green like this all summer, and it'll support a thousand head with plenty of winter feed without cutting and stacking.”

Dusty's silence was the finest tribute he could pay to her brief description of the K T ranch. It was the kind of spot cattlemen in the arid west dreamt about after imbibing too heavily on Saturday night.

“It's only about half grazed now,” Katie said in a low voice. “There were about eight hundred head on the ranch when dad died. And the rustlers pick out the best of my stuff every time they make a raid.”

“It ain't surprisin' you got rustlers,” Dusty muttered. “Eighteen miles of river bank on one side. All they got to do is push across an' cut out whatever they want. Funny thing to me is that yore daddy ever kep' any stock long enough to get 'em to market.”

“But it isn't that bad at all,” Katie explained. “The river all along here has a quicksand bottom. There are only three fords in the whole eighteen miles where a man can ride across without bogging down. We've got it all fenced, of course, to keep the stock out.”

“Only three fords?” Dusty's eyes lighted. “Three men could guard them easy enough.”

“I don't know,” Katie responded hopelessly. “I had men guarding the fords. The rustling went right on. Yet we
know
there are no other places the river can be forded.”

Directly ahead of the buckboard, rising magically out of the grassy flat, was a large group of trees. Cotton-woods, poplars and weeping willows.

“That's the home place,” Katie told him, nodding toward the seeming mirage. “The main spring is there. Dad built the house himself, more than thirty years ago. He homesteaded that section and leased the rest of it, and he'd been buying it up steadily since then. He paid out the last section two years before he died.”

The team was straining against the bits now, eager to finish the journey to the tree-shaded and quiet spot that was home.

Dusty let them out into a fast trot, his eyes narrowed as he took in the long rambling building of rough limestone blocks in the shade of giant cottonwoods at the upper end of the oasis, the huge pond surrounded by weeping willows and the double line of straight poplars leading down to the sheds and corrals a couple of hundred yards distant from the main house.

A few white leghorn chickens scratched idly in the yard, and a Jersey milk cow munched her cud in a wire corral and watched them drive up. There was no other sign of life about the place. Over it brooded an atmosphere of melancholy and desertion that was somehow evil in essence. It was planned and built for peace and serenity, for the heartwarming quietude that comes with security and freedom from care and want. But this was different. It seemed to be peopled with ghosts, and the chill that struck Dusty Morgan's heart was colder than could be occasioned by the mere shade of trees overhead as he pulled the buckboard up in the yard.

He looked at Katie and saw that she had become subdued and listless. He cramped the wheel for her and she stepped down, saying quietly, “I'll go in the house and tell Juana to start some dinner. I think you'll find Miguel around the barn. They're the only ones left. Come up to the house after you've unharnessed and I'll see about furnishing you a horse so you can ride on.”

She turned away from the buckboard and went slowly toward the stone ranch house. Dusty had to bite his lip to keep from crying out and telling her he had no intention of riding on. He had come to the end of the trail, and he knew it.

9

Miguel was an ancient Mexican with a withered and seamed countenance. His tall frame with shrunken and cadaverous and his wispy hair showed silvery-white when he lifted a shapeless felt hat to greet Dusty politely. He showed some yellow snags of teeth in a wide smile, and his black eyes gleamed with curiosity as they lingered on Dusty's costume and on the gunbelt slanting across his hips.

He went to the head of the team and caught them by the bridles when Dusty pulled them up in front of the big barn. When Dusty dropped the lines and stepped down, he asked, “You are the new
patrón, señor?
”

Dusty said, “Sort of. Yeh. That is, I'm plannin' to take hold here. But I ain't the man Miss Katie was lookin' for.”

“No,
señor?
”

“He didn't come. Got killed on the Marfa stage.”

The old Mexican said, “So? And you weel work here,
señor?
”

“Call me Dusty.”

“
Bueno
. I am Miguel,
Señor
Dusty.”

Dusty nodded and held out his hand. The Mexican shook hands with him gravely and replaced his hat on his head. “I am glad you are come,
señor
. The Katie, she ees need man bad.”

“You're the only one left, Miguel?”

“
Sí
. My
mujer
, Juana, she ees cook for Mees Katie. And I am tend the barn. I am too old for the riding much no more.” He shook his head sadly and went around to unhook the traces.

Dusty stayed at the heads of the palominos, held them until the traces were unfastened from the double-tree, then led them a step forward and let the tongue out of the neck yoke, dropped it to the ground. Miguel hurried around to help him unhook the neck yoke, protesting, “I weel feex the team,
señor
. Eet ees not for you.”

“I want to get the low-down on some things.” Dusty walked beside him as he led the team into the cool barn. He busied himself helping unharness while he plied the old man with questions.

“Been here a long time, Miguel?”

“
Sí
. A long time. Since the
Señor
Rollins built thees house.”

“How many riders did he usta keep on the pay roll?”

“Three men, she are work steady. In roundup there are work for more. Ten, maybe, or twelve.”

“And he didn't have no trouble with rustlers?”

“No,
señor
. He 'ave no trouble.”

“Why do you reckon it started right after he died?”

The old man shrugged his stooped shoulders. “Mees Katie ees tal the men they are not for wear guns. Across Border are many bad
hombres
afraid for steal while
Señor
Rollins ees here. After he die they no more 'fraid. Find out queek Katie riders no more got guns.” He spread out gnarled hands expressively. “Ees much bad now.”

“But she tells me Lon Boxley has been sending his X L riders over to help out.”