Ernest Haycox - The Greatest Westerns of Ernest Haycox

The rest of the journey was made in heavy silence. This meeting had greatly puzzled him. If Breck were so heavy-handed, why hadn't the man challenged him on the spot? Instead he'd been offered a job. Was the Octopus the kind that spoke softly and struck in the dark? This affair was getting complicated and that was a fact. There was only one thing he could depend on for a certainty—Theed Trono's outright enmity.

Back on the porch, Jill Breck spoke her mind. "He certainly has got his nerve riding deliberately over here to tell us that. Did he mean, Dad, he was going in with Hamby?"

"Hamby died," answered Breck, staring into the bright yard. "The lad's goin' to take over the homestead."

Jill fell silent for a moment. She was a loyal girl with an immense pride for everything concerning the JIB. Nor was it her fault that she did not know the seamier side of her father's affairs. She had always thought that every acre within the valley was owned in fee simple and she could never understand why nesters dared to trespass. She had asked her father about this once, but the reply had been so vague and technical that it only served to strengthen her belief that her father was, in a kindly way, trying to shield the lawless nesters. For she had never seen other than kindness in her father. What he had been in his younger days she never knew, and was never told. The stories of the range wars came down to her as so much legend and whatever the trouble occurring between JIB and 3Cross in later years, it was carefully kept from her, just as it was kept from the outside world.

"Well, I'm sorry the man died. He was old and goodness knows how he made a living, but he shouldn't have come on our land. And I don't see why you allow this red-headed cowpuncher to defy you like he did. I'll bet he's a Stubbins' man. A nester doesn't wear clothes like that, or ride like that."

"Uhuh. Jill, you go see about the grub."

When she had disappeared inside, Breck spoke to the Indian who had held Lilly's horse. "Pattipaws, you git Trono for me. Tell him I want him."

The Indian was away on the run, leaving Breck a morose, silent figure. "Seems there's a lot o' things passin' on hereabouts I don't have wind of lately. Trono's forcin' my hand. Well, I allus knew what sort of man he was. If he's tryin' to out-nigger me, it's my own fault."

Trono rolled around the corner of the house, a surly indifferent man built in the same mold as his boss. Breck, eyeing the foreman, concluded that was the reason he had kept the foreman so long. Here was the image of himself as he had been in earlier days—huge and tireless, without compunction, a hard driver. If Trono, in addition, had the handicap of being without loyalty and was a dirty fighter in his rages, Breck had shut his eyes. Trono had accomplished the necessary and unmentionable JIB chores; that was the service he had required. But now Trono was assuming too much; he was becoming intractable.

"Well?" muttered the foreman.

Breck closed his great fists. "Who told you to kill Hamby?"

Trono smiled. "How d'yuh know?"

"Don't trim with me, you yellow-belly!" cried Breck. "Ain't I told you to leave Hamby alone?"

"Well, that's all the good it did yuh. If yore goin' to call names, I'll call a few myself. Yore gettin' chicken-hearted. Losin' yore grip. I tried to use peaceable means on that nester, but he was pigheaded, so I killed him. Since when've you changed idees on that subject? Wa'n't long ago when you sent me out with a gun fer those fellas."

The gray color swept down into Breck's collar and his hand pressed at his heart. "The world ain't the same to an old man, Theed. Was a time when the whole valley wasn't elbow room enough. Well, I'm more peaceable now to'rds neighbors. Y'see, about all the land I'll be needin' is a strip six feet by three."

Trono ripped out a short and ugly word. "I killed Hamby fer my own personal satisfaction like I used to do certain jobs fer you. An' I'll kill any other gent tha tries to squat on that spring."

"You got my orders on that, Trono," said Breck, speaking in a dead level tone. "Mean to disobey me?"

Trono was grinning. It was the same tight, malevolent grin Lilly had witnessed the night before in Jake Miner's place; the man was riding his victory high and wide. "Who's talkin' about obedience? I'm a free man, Breck."

Breck leaned forward, one trembling forefinger tapping the arm of his chair. "Listen, Theed. Nobody ever crossed me yet an' got away with it. Which applies to you. Yore my foreman. I picked you outen trouble an' I give you a job when other folks wanted to tie you to a limb. Now, boy, don't try any rannies or I'll bust you. I'll bust you, hear? You do my orders an' you do 'em on the jump. What's more, keep away from the spring. They's a new man there and he's welcome to the place. I suspect he's more'n a match fer you, at that."

Trono's features suffused with a purplish red. "That redhead eh? So he come tellin' you tales. I give him twenty-four hours to pull out an' by Godfrey he'd better take the warnin'!"

"You got my orders, Trono!"

"To hell with you, Breck. I'll do as I please. You start a fight with me an' I'm apt to show you a few surprises on this yere ranch. Think that over!"

He wheeled off toward the bunkhouse. Breck saw him stop, whisper something to one of the hands and jerk a thumb toward the porch, nodding his head derisively. The old man relaxed in his chair, breathing hard. A grinding pain ran from his neck down his left arm and a old sweat covered him from head to foot. Of a sudden he was very weak and the world grew dim and distant. He seemed to be apart from his body—watching himself die. Well, he had a few regrets. He had lived his share of years, lived them up to the hilt and had all the fun any man could have wished. A few things, perhaps, he would like to have the power of undoing. But life wasn't that way; once a man played his hand there was no recalling it.

No, it wasn't for himself, but for his girl that he worried. Trono had the upper hand now, and Trono was a disloyal, self- seeking dog. Why hadn't he considered this long ago when he could have crushed the man with his fist? What would happen to the place after he died? Jill was a hard-headed little kid with a world of spunk, but she couldn't run a cattle ranch without help and she couldn't buck Trono if he was of a mind to make trouble. And the foreman meant to make trouble; the man's last warning indicated as much. There were a dozen ways in which a ranch could be stripped, mined and made unbearable for the girl. Breck gripped his hands together, feeling the sweat roll down his sleeves. This helplessness was something new, something terrible.

"I'm of a mind to kill him, by the Lord!" He groaned, and he thought of getting his gun and calling Trono back. Shoot him cold. Once he would have had no scruples, but the stomach was out of him now, just as the foreman had said.

The day grew dimmer and the sunshine turned to shadow. In the dim borderland which is passed by man but once he found himself thinking of Tom Lilly. There was a fighting heart and an honest face. He had seen men like that before. He had ruined men like that before. Ruined them and laughed. But there was no laughter in him now. "Jill," he muttered, "Jill! You send for the pill peddler. And bring Pattipaws to me. I've got one more shot in the barrel yet."

Tom Lilly ate his supper, rolled a cigarette and sat in the doorway watching the sun go down over the Buttes. With the lengthening shadows came a breeze that soughed through the cottonwoods and lulled him to a lazy, dreaming peace. There were plenty of things to think about, but for a time he let his fancy roll where it pleased. It was a mighty queer feeling, this, of being perched high above the heat of the desert and watching the world turn around from his own doorstep. Of course, it wasn't really his yet, but it would be. He meant to camp. The rolling stone had found a mighty fine place to grow a little moss.