Ernest Haycox - Ernest Haycox - Ultimate Collection - Western Classics & Historical Novels

"That's right," agreed Woolfridge. "About that proposition of mine—"

"Oh, hell, I thought you had somethin' to tell me about the rodeo. Don't pester me with any more offers."

"I will meet any reasonable price you set, Satterlee," insisted Woolfridge. "I'm serious."

"Yuh? Son, if I set a price it wouldn't be nowise reasonable. And that's likewise serious. What would me and my wife do with a lot of money and no place to go? Shucks, you ain't talkin' to a poor man."

"Now you're trying to draw me into something else," said Woolfridge mildly. "I don't care what you do with the money. Buy a battleship and tour the world. It may sound like nonsense to you, but I need your range worse than you do. I want it bad enough to pay a stiff price. And I have always found a man could buy anything if he wanted it sufficiently. I have also found all men will sell at a price. I'm trying to find yours."

"Great shades!" snorted Dad. "You got the dangdest way of dickerin' I ever heard tell about. Same as sayin' I can keep on talkin', but you'll get my land by and by."

"I'm trying to find your price."

"Well, I'll set a price high enough to keep you off," said Dad. Immediately he checked himself and looked into Woolfridge's face with a sharp, shrewd penetration. "No, I won't let you run me into any corral like that, either. Might take me up. You're foxy, but you ain't got good sense tryin' to extend your range in a bad year. Not when you got to pay boom prices. What's in the back of your coco, anyhow?"

"Just what I told you," was Woolfridge's patient answer. "I want to be the kingpin in this piece of country. If a man can afford to nurse his vanity, why not?"

Satterlee bit into his cigar and became mellow. "Now, listen. I was born here. I courted my wife here, and I buried three kids out yonder on a green little knoll. I made money here, and I've sorter put my roots way down deep. Don't you talk dicker to me any more, son. I'm finished. All you and me can discuss is horses and buckers to-morrow. Believe I'll sit in a judicious game."

He left Woolfridge, eyes sparkling with the robust anticipation of battle. Woolfridge watched him settle up to a vacant table and crook his fingers at sundry prospects. There was one particular man who seemed on the verge of joining this new game; but Woolfridge caught that man's eyes and held it for a fraction of a moment. He turned into the street and walked through the shadows. In a little while somebody drew abreast, obscured. "What was it, Mr. Woolfridge?"

"Before you sit in that game with Satterlee," murmured Woolfridge, "I wanted to tell you to tighten your play all around. Tighten it up, Clyde, understand? Play for Satterlee and let the others win or lose, but play for Satterlee."

A moment's silence. "You told me when you brought me into this country, Mr. Woolfridge, I was not to turn a crooked card."

"So I did and so you have. And you have built up a reputation for being square. Which is exactly what I wanted you to do. Now go back there and do as I say. I have been nursing you along for this particular time. Use all the tricks in your bag, Clyde, which are manifold. That's all."

"How much have I got behind me to do this?"

"You are free to sign I O U's to twenty thousand. I'll privately protect them. I'll protect any obligation—so long as you whittle down Satterlee. Boost the play high. Dad's feeling good. Now go back there and work."

"All right—"

Behind them was the smashing of glass and one sharp explosion. They turned to see a saloon door erupt a vast, towering form. Down the street came a mighty wailing cry, weird and full throated and savage; a cry that seemed possible only to some enraged beast. It poured along the thoroughfare, striking a chill into the holiday humor of the crowd. Clyde the gambler swore and made nervous gestures with his slim fingers.

"Great God, what's that?"

Woolfridge lifted his thin shoulders. "That is Theodorik Perrine twisting his own tail for to-morrow's battle."

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The flag was up; the cowboy band had finished the last bar of the national anthem; the crowd in the grandstands settled back; a pistol cracked at the far turn of the track; and a dozen ponies came battering down the main stretch on the opening relay of the rodeo. Excitement roared from one end of the field to the other; the crowd was up again and yelling encouragement to the riders swirling through the dust. Yellow and red flashed in the sun; there was a sudden melee at the opposite turn of the track, and a pony went down, rider swinging through the air. A sigh like the passage of wind swept the onlookers; then the race was over, and the spilled rider sat up and waved his hand at his departing horse. Again a pistol cracked; the show was under way.

The rodeo hands were in the center of the field with the first of the bucking horses, each brute snubbed up to the hand's saddle horn. Blindfolds were on, and men went about the ticklish business of saddling. Jim Chaffee stood at one side of the arena, smoking a cigarette and looking over the fence to some far distant point of the horizon. His long legs were spread slightly apart, his blue neckpiece fluttered slightly to the wind, and his up-tilted hat let the sun fall fully on his lean, bronzed cheeks. His eyes were half closed, the cigarette drooped from a corner of his thin lips. It was a splendid picture of a man relaxed and indifferent; he seemed entirely forgetful at the moment of the part he was about to play. And in truth he was. Looking northward, gravely wistful of features, he was seeing in his mind the cabin by the creek and the tall surrounding cottonwoods. It didn't seem right that so cheerful and tucked-in a place should be lying tenantless. There ought to be a fire in the stove, and somebody ought to be out fixing that broken corral pole. And he was saying: "I never will find another like it. Not in a thousand years."

Gay Thatcher saw him there and stored the picture in her memory. Leaning forward from the foremost box in the stands she drew the attention of William Wells Woolfridge. "Is he riding to- day?"

Woolfridge was one of the three judges; at present he sat on his horse beside the other two, French Melotte and Dad Satterlee, waiting for the rodeo hands to get the buckers ready. He turned at her question. "Who? Chaffee—yes he's riding, Miss Gay. He has some reputation for that sort of thing in this country."

"He looks—picturesque," said Gay, and then inwardly protested at her own use of the word. It sounded exactly like what a tourist would say. She wasn't a tourist and she hadn't meant that. "I mean, he looks exactly like a Westerner should look."

Woolfridge smiled. "Perhaps there's a little grandstand gesture in that pose. Most of the boys like to show off before the crowd."

Dad Satterlee had his attention on the field, but he caught that last sentence and turned suddenly. "What you talkin' about, son? Chaffee don't play to the crowd. He ain't built that way. Never was, never will. He wasn't even figurin' on competin' this year. That ranch of his sorter ties him down."

"He no longer has it," corrected Woolfridge, amused. "He lost it. That bank took it over yesterday."

"Oh," said Gay, instantly sorry.

Satterlee's bulldog face showed disbelief. "What's that? You're kiddin' us, Woolfridge. He'd come to me for help first. He'd told me right off."

"I happen to know," replied Woolfridge. He was so quietly positive about it that Dad Satterlee's red cheeks grew crimson.

"Of all the dumb fool things! By Jupiter, if I don't tear the hide offen him! Three years work gone up the spout, and he's too doggone proud to ask me for a boost! Wait till I lay a tongue on the young stiff-back!"

Gay's attention was attracted elsewhere. "Who is that enormous man coming through the side gate?"