to Tame a Land (1955) (12 page)

One night after we got back to the hotel Mustang an d me were having supper when he nudged me.

"Rye, there's a dude got his eye on you. He's bee n studying you for some time now. You ain't been in n o trouble back East, have you?"

Mustang, he was a blond fellow with a lean, toug h face. No gun slinger, but a mean man to face in a fight , and game as they come. He was also a man very sharp t o notice things, so when I could, I glanced around.

This tenderfoot sat across the room. He was a tall ma n with black hair, gray at the temples, and mighty handsome.

Maybe he was fifty years old, but dressed real fine. Whe n I looked around he saw me and our eyes held for a moment, and then he got up and started across the room.

I wasn't duded up as I had been in New Orleans. M
y fancy clothes were all packed away. Nonetheless, I didn'
t look so bad, I guess. I had on those black calfskin boots , a gray wool shirt with a black string tie, and a black , braided short coat that I'd picked up in Texas. It was cu t Mexican style. And I had on my gray pants, tucked int o my boots.

Without looking again, I tried to place the stranger. H
e might be a gambler, but somehow that didn't fit, either.

And at a quick glance my guess was that he wasn't packin g a gun.

He paused alongside the table. "I beg your pardon.

My name is Denison Mead."

I got up. "I'm Ryan Tyler," I said, "and this here'
s Mustang Roberts. Will you sit down?"

"Thank you." He sat down and motioned for his bottl e of wine to be brought to our table. "I'm a lawyer," h e said, "representing a mining company. I've been lookin g over some gold properties."

"Sounds prosperous. I've been dealing in cows."

"Texas?"

"Lately."

We talked a mite, just casual conversation. He ha d nothing to say about his reason for joining us. He wa s pleasant enough, yet I had an idea he was fishing fo r something, something he wanted to know. He didn't as k many questions, but he had a way of getting a man t o talk. But I hadn't played poker for nothing. I wasn'
t going to tell him anything more than I wanted to. O
n the other hand, I'd nothing to conceal.

"This country your home? Or is it Texas?"

"I'm drifting," I said. "No home, properly speaking , but I aim to get a little home over in the mountains. A r anch, I've got in mind."

He looked at me thoughtfully. "About twenty? Or twenty-one?"

"Twenty," I said.

We talked some of cattle, and he gathered I'd recentl y been in Kansas City and New Orleans.

"Were you born out here?"

It came quickly, but it slid into the conversation i n such a way that I became suspicious. Something abou t the way he said it made me believe this was what he ha d been planning to ask all the time.

I was getting uneasy. That shooting in New Orleans , now. That was off my home grounds, and they looke d at things different there than out here. Unless somebod y had stolen the gun, they would have found Woods wit h a pistol in his hand, but no telling what Chris Lilli e might tell the law. Still, he was apt to tell them nothing.

Not his kind.

"No, sir," I said finally, "I was born in Maryland. O
r so my pap told me. Lived in New York when I was a boy , then in Missouri and Kansas."

"You've traveled a good bit." He paused, and me, I'
m good at reading sign. I can read it on faces as well a s on the ground, and that's why I play a fair game of poker.

And right then I had a feeling this was another questio n he'd been building up to.

"You've no home," he said. "Wouldn't you say you r home was where your parents were?"

"Ma died on the way West," I explained. "Pap wa s killed by Indians when I was twelve."

"So. I've heard of such stories," he commented. "I g uess they're a part of the West. Men have to die t o build any country strong. All of them don't die in battle , though."

"Pap did," I said, and then I told him about it. Mustang had never heard the story, either, but he heard i t now. How Ma took sick and didn't really have no decen t care, though Pap did the best he could. Then she die d and when she was buried we started on West. I told hi m all that, and I told him about the last few hours, abou t the wagon train leaving us, about the fight in the ravine.

But I didn't tell them about what I did to the Indians , or about Jack McGarry.

He was a pleasant man, easy to talk to, and he wa s friendly. I told him about Logan Pollard, and abou t reading Plutarch.

"And did you read it five times?"

"Only four, so far. But I'll get to it."

"And this place you're going to . . . Mason Crossing?

Do you intend to stay there for a while?"

"Prob'ly," I said, "but I might move on."

After he left us I did some thinking about it. No la w that I knew about was looking for me. Woods was kille d in self-defense, and he was no account, anyway. Thos e days, men like him didn't attract much notice when the y died. Everybody figured the country was saved a hanging.

Nevertheless, this talk worried me some.

Tired of hanging around gambling joints, I bough t a dozen books and lay on my bed in my room throug h the long cold days and read. Outside the wind blew a lot , and every other day or so it snowed. All the passes wer e closed and nobody was traveling. The streets sounded wit h the jingle of sleigh bells and the stoves in the saloon s glowed cherry red.

At night sometimes we sat around a big stove in th e lobby and yarned. I didn't talk much, but I liked t o listen. There were mining men and cattlemen there, gamblers, drifters, and businessmen. There were drummers an d cattle buyers, and men just looking for something to pu t money into. Most of them had been around a lot an d they talked well.

Up in my room I read a couple of books by an Englis h writer named Dickens, and I read the Scarlet Letter, b y Hawthorne. There was some poetry, too, by an Englis h writer named Byron. This I liked a mighty lot.

One day when I came back to the hotel that lawye r was waiting for me. Mustang was out somewhere, but thi s fellow was sitting in a big leather chair in the almos t empty lobby.

He seemed anxious to talk private, so we went upstairs, and when my room door was closed, he turne d on me. "Tyler, I've been hearing some talk. Don't g o back to Mason Crossing."

This stopped me flat-footed, but I waited a long minute and then said, "Why not?" And I was pretty cool , for I want no stranger butting into my affairs.

"Burdette will kill you."

"I doubt it. Anyway," I looked him right in the eye , "I'm going back."

He said no more about that, walking up and down th e room a couple of times. Then suddenly he stopped an d looked at me. "How many men have you actually killed , Tyler?"

"None of your business."

He looked at me for a long time, his eyes sort o f searching my face. Yet there was something friendly abou t it all, and something worried, too. Almost as if he ha d an interest.

"Of course," he agreed finally, "you're right. It is non e of my business. Only . . . well, no matter."

He crossed to the door. "Whatever you do, take car e of yourself. And you may hear from me."

He went out and the next day I heard he had take n the stage for Cheyenne. Nobody in town knew much abou t him except that he had been investigating the titles t o some mining claims, and he had looked over some prospects. At least, looked them over as much as he coul d with the weather what it was.

Two days later the cold spell broke and I shook Mustang out of a sleep.

"Pack up, man. We're riding."

He didn't argue any. I expect town was getting on hi s nerves, too. Anyway, within the hour we were riding ou t of town, headed west.

The route we had taken swung south by way of Durango , and as the thaw was on, we made good time.

We reached Durango late at night and the next morning I found a squaw who had been making buckski n breeches, and I bought some. I was beginning to feel a s if I belonged again.

This was my country. I liked the largeness of it, th e space, the sharp, clear mountain air, and the riding. Whe n I had a ranch it was going to be a home ranch.

While we rode west I told Mustang about this Denison Mead, and what he had said about staying awa y from Mason Crossing.

"Mighty good advice," Roberts agreed, "but what'
s he takin' on so about?"

"Can't figure that unless he knows Burdette."

"Ain't that. But he was askin' a lot of questions abou t you."

We forgot about that during the day, for we were coming up to my old country again, and somewhere ahea d was the ranch, and I'd be seeing Liza again. To sa y nothing of Old Blue. And Mrs. Hetrick was almost lik e my own mother. It had been a long time. Too long. An d Hetrick was dead.

Those last few miles before we reached the ranch sur e fretted me. Finally I started the gray into a trot, and Mustang, he came right along with me. When the tow n came in sight I cut around back of it toward the ranch. I c ould hardly wait to see the place, and to see Mrs. Hetric k and Liza.

The gray was almost at a run when I rounded to th e gate. We went through, and then I pulled up.

Grass grew in the dooryard and there were tumbleweed s against the fence. The porch was sagging and the doo r banged on loose hinges. A low wind moaned among th e pines and around the eaves, and I stood there lookin g around, a big empty feeling inside me.

I got down from the saddle and walked slowly throug h the house. She was empty. The folks were gone, an d from the look of things, they had been gone for a lon g time.

Inside I felt as empty as the house, and when a lon g wind with a touch of snow on it came down off the mountain, I shivered. The gate at the garden creaked an d banged, and I stood there, sick and empty. Liza was gon e Chapter 11

THE CROSSING was built up some. I could see that a s we rounded into the main street. It was built up, an d Mason's Store was bigger. There was a long awning i n front of the rooming house and it had become a two-stor y hotel.

Thinking suddenly, I turned aside and rode aroun d to the cemetery. Mustang, he trailed along, never leavin g me.

At the cemetery gate I got down and went in. It wa s like so many of those Westerh cemeteries, a high knoll outside of town with the wind blowing across it and tumbleweeds racked against the fences.

And I found what I was looking for, and more. Hetrick's grave, and beside it the grave of his wife, who ha d died just four months later.

Both gone.

And Liza? She might still be in town, although somehow I was sure she wasn't. -

"Mustang," I said, "I got to get me a man. But I don'
t aim to kill him, not unless I have to. I want you t o go down to town. You be careful, because this Burdett e is mighty mean. But you listen around and find out i f he's still there, and where he is. I want to come on hi m unexpected-like. I want to get the jump."

Sitting under some cedars there by the graveyard, wit h the gray grass alongside me, I waited. Maybe I slep t some. Anyway, lights were coming on in town before Mustang came back.

The chill had awakened me, and when I sat up I hear d his home. He rode up to the gate and got down, then h e walked over and squatted on his heels and began to buil d a smoke.

"Burdette's there, all right. Mighty mean, like you say.

The folks got no use for him, but he's still marshal an d they're scared. Ever' night about this time he makes hi s rounds. Then he goes to the saloon and sits until everybody turns in. He makes another round, then he turns i n himself.

"Come morning, he goes up to the restaurant for breakfast, and he sits around some. He killed another man abou t two weeks ago, and I got an idea the town would like t o get shut of him."

"You eat?"

"Uh-huh."

"I ain't hungry. I think we'd best bed down right here.

I want to get him in the morning at breakfast."

"Good. The restaurant has a back door, too. You wan t I should come in and get the drop?"

"No. You leave it alone unless somebody tries to but t in. This is my branding. I'll heat my own irons an d make my own mark."

When we were all rolled up in our blankets and lyin g there listening to the town sounds, he said, all of a sudden, "That girl? Liza Hetrick? She left town six, seve n months ago. And she only had sixty-three dollars. Too k the stage out. West."

"You should have been a Pinkerton."

Mustang drew on his cigarette." "Maybe I will be."

He chuckled. "But first we find your gal."

Morning found us with our beds rolled and ready.

We took the trail down into town and went throug h streets and alleys until Mustang could show me the bac k door to the restaurant. Then we rode past it.

"We may have to leave fast," I said.

Mustang chuckled dryly. "You leave. I'll be right behind you, maybe ahead of you."