Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

"How many cows have we got over that way now, Quagmire?"

"Three-four hun'red." After a pause the foreman added, "They's sorter bunched up the last few days. Driftin'. Baldy Laggett says they shifted overnight to'rds them arroyos that fork."

"Tracks there?"

"Yeah—tracks. 'Sif somebody was scoutin'!"

Kit Ballard stood in a corner and watched them. She sensed the undercurrent of conflict behind the words, the slow gathering of a decision; and she admired the casualness with which the two covered themselves. Tom's head dropped forward, there was a tightening of his features and a harder glow down in the wells of his eyes. She saw him in a fighting mood, and this new point of character left her with mixed emotions. He was beyond her power to sway, beyond her ability to cajole. Quagmire's hand described an Indian sign that meant nothing to her but seemed to impress Gillette. "P.R.N. cattle crossin' the river four days ago. Saw a travellin' puncher this mo'nin' headin' to'rds Deadwood. He told me. All Tejanners gone from the south bank. Wyatt lef las' week."

Gillette's head came up. "Where to?"

The girl caught the bite of that question; she stirred, wanting to speak yet not able to break in. How much aside they placed a woman out here—how much of a man's world it was! No time for philosophy, no time for that exchange of wit she was so accustomed to. No time for playing at all. They moved slowly, they seemed to drift with the elements. But she began to see they were not drifting but fighting. Always fighting the treachery of nature and the treachery of man. Struggle was the warp of their lives, it left its stamp on every one of them.

"Dunno," murmured Quagmire; "puncher didn't remark. All gone, though. An', like I say, they's P.R.N. stock with P.R.N. punchers on all them ranches now."

Gillette's pipe disappeared in his pocket. He was drawling, "Tell Whitey Almo he's to stick on the ranch. Rest of us ride."

Quagmire's eyes strayed toward the girl and bashfully dropped. "Yo' hunch runs with mine," he murmured and went out.

The wind was dying, it was dark, and the day's heat had gone. Tom Gillette touched a match to the kindling in the fireplace; the colored cook entered like a shadow and stood questioningly on the threshold.

"Get it on the table, doctor. We pull out early."

The black man left. "Where to, Tom?" asked Christine.

"Out along the range, Kit."

"Trouble?"

"Just a little night riding, Kit."

They stood at opposite corners, looking at each other across the interval while the old cook slid in and out with his dishes and his platters; they seemed to be unconscious of him. Christine had a trick of putting her hand up to her breast when disturbed. She did it now, and the yellow light revealed the trouble in her eyes. Once, when the black man was out of the room, she half whispered to him, "You are not the same man I knew back East."

"Clay to clay," muttered Tom Gillette, cheek muscles snapping.

"No—you are bigger. I am sorry—you will never know how much—that I made you dance to my tune. Tom—isn't it Western to forget and forgive a mistake?"

The crew came filing in, and there was no more between them. Christine took the head of the table, and even her wit was damped; they disregarded her this night, they ate with intolerant haste and they were gone again; twelve homely faces grim set, twelve sets of eyes burning in the lamplight; rough men, illiterate men—men whose lives made queer and sometimes shameful patterns along the past. Intuition told her that. Yet they were brave. The wind had gone, and outside she heard a slapping of saddles and a murmuring—a soft murmuring and now and then a slashing oath in the darkness. Quagmire's face appeared a moment in the doorway, his head dropped and he was gone. Tom's cigarette sailed into the fireplace; he squared toward her.

"Be back before midnight, I'm thinkin'. Whitey Almo and doctor will be camped outside this door."

"I am not deceived," said Christine, coming forward. "You are going out to fight."

"I'll not be denying it," said he, soberly. "We've got no constables to summon hereabouts, Kit, when the law is broken. Maybe a fight—maybe only a false alarm. My back's to the wall. I'm not crying about it, understand. I'm only doing what my dad would have done, or any other man would do. That's the law of the range."

"To kill or be killed!" she cried. "I don't understand it! Here in America in this century—I don't believe it! You are not cold enough to take a life, Tom!"

"The fellow that rustles another fellow's cattle dies. I'm telling you it is range law. You're a long, long ways from New York, Kit. Do you know what the old fur trappers used to say? North of Leavenworth there is no law. Well, there's law now—but it never catches up with us folks running west."

"How many are they, Tom?"

He turned to the door, broad shoulders rising. "Ample, Kit. But they don't know the temper of Texans. They don't know..."

She was in front of him. Her hand fell across his arm. "God keep you, Tom! Oh, it's a brutal land! I hate it! Be careful!"

Again that pressure drawing him down toward her lips and the sweet smell of her hair and the gripping beauty of her face. It was like wine to him, it brought back every old memory, and some of the old desire. He pulled himself free and crossed the threshold, half blind. Quagmire murmured. "All set." He swung up to his saddle and reined around. The cavalcade led off, and the cold air cleared his brain. "Stretch out," he muttered; they galloped southward into the night, and the girl, supporting herself in the doorway, listened until the drum of their ponies' hoofs was absorbed in the vast vault. She turned inside then, oppressed by the stark blackness of the heavens; there was a power pressing, her down, sapping the courage from her veins. Mystery swirled just beyond the threshold. Out beyond lay men waiting to kill other men. The colored cook entered, muscles rippling beneath his torn shirt; Whitey Almo's face appeared vaguely across the doorway, taciturn and watchful.

The Circle G riders swept steadily onward through the swirling shadows, silent save for the chafe and tinkle of their gear and the rhythmic pound of the horses. Arrow straight for an hour; Quagmire rode abreast Tom Gillette, stirrup touching stirrup, and it was the pressure or withdrawal of Quagmire's thigh that gave Gillette the course. He knew the land well; but Quagmire, who loved the night and who seemed to be able to see through the utter blackness of it, knew it even better. And it was Quagmire who gradually turned the cavalcade from south to southwest and then slowly eastward. The moon was a thin arc of silver, the ancient stars grew more and more remote. Onward they galloped, up and down the swells, the night breeze cold against their faces and the sound of the coyotes in their ears, howling out of the distance with the sadness of ages quivering in that lonely song. Ahead, the shadows piled thicker and the dim strip of the horizon was broken. They were falling downward, or the presence of the butte in front made it seem so. Gillette sat back in the saddle.

"Halt."

They stopped. He got to the ground and pressed his ear against the sand. The invisible telegraph carried no messages. Quagmire's voice croaked mournfully, "Not far now. At a walk, uh, Tom."

"At a walk."

They swung along a circle, the massed shadow turning their right flank. Twice they stopped to listen; and presently the shadow was behind and they were in the bed of an arroyo. Cattle moved directly to the front. They dismounted and stood silent.

"My shoulder aches," murmured Quagmire, following a long quiet. "It's a plumb bad sign. Was a man once in Tucson with a trick toothache. Trouble allus follered. He got to depend on it and sorter bragged about it. First time his mother-in-law died. Second time his wife died. Third time it ached nothin' happened and it sho'ly aggervated him. Looked like the dam' tooth wasn't nowise dependable. But they took him up an' hung him fo' murderin' said mother-in-law an' wife. On the scaffol' the gent says: 'I die happy. Didn't I tell yo' somethin' allus happened when it ached?' That's what yo'd call infallible." He moved nearer Gillette. "Reckon I overlooked a bet. Didn't know yo' wanted Wyatt's new location or I'd of asked."