Brian Garfield: Sliphammer

The only clue to his present occupation was the pair of pinholes in the left breast patch pocket of his shirt. He wasn’t wearing a badge today.

Alerted by movement in the porch shadows, he straightened in the saddle and put his boots back into the stirrups. Down there he saw Caroline come out into sight and lift one hand to shade her eyes, looking toward the western horizon. Jeremiah Tree gigged his horse gently downhill.

She hadn’t seen him yet; she was looking the other way. As Tree rode switchbacking down the hillside, he saw Rafe come out of the house ramming his shirt tails into his Levi’s and then sweeping the disheveled hair back out of his eyes. Rafe walked up behind Caroline, reached under her arms and laid both hands on her breasts. The girl tipped her head back against his shoulder.

Tree’s face showed no break in expression. He was thinking of what Caroline’s father had said to him a month ago: I tried to talk her out of it, Sliphammer boy. Honest to God I did. I told her not to marry your brother because he just ain’t tough enough for her. She’ll put spurs to him one time when she ain’t even thanking about it, and she’ll rip him to shreds ‘thout ever knowing how it happened.

He brought his horse around the end of the porch. He heard crickets in the trees down by the spring. A hawk drifted above the house; a dog lay asprawl under the porch, panting in the shade.

Sliphammer Tree said, “Whose dog is that?”

Rafe had taken his hands down off Caroline’s breasts when he’d heard the hoofbeats. Now they were holding hands. Rafe said, “Beats me. Stray, I reckon.”

“Lo the bride and groom,” said Sliphammer with a little smile at Caroline. Husky and blonde, she made him think of haystacks. She had a sturdy, firm body; her breasts seemed so tightly packed and swollen that one good squeeze might bring forth a squirting shower of juices. She had the eyes of an alert doe stepping into a strange clearing.

Caroline said, “Do you like the place?”

Sliphammer had been inspecting the ranch. The buildings were weathered and tumbledown, with the look of abandonment. He said, “It looks lived in-hard to tell by what.”

“Snakes and roaches, mainly,” said Rafe. He was young and very earnest: half amazed by- his own possession of this vibrant, vital girl-wife he had, he had turned eager and flushed, and impatient with ambition. It troubled Tree but he had said nothing in the past week; once they had got married it had seemed too late for avuncular advice. The kid would have to make his own mistakes.

Rafe seemed irritable just now: his brown eyes flashed erratically. He was chunky and broad through chest and shoulder; in a few more years when he filled out completely he would be a powerful man. His jaw was wide and blunt. He had Sliphammer’s long bladed nose and the shape of his cheekbones and eyes was the same, but his bone structure was heavier, less graceful, and his coloring was lighter. They had shared the same father but different mothers: the frontier was hard on women.

Rafe said, “Damn it, do you like the place?”

“Looks like you’ve already got your minds set on it. Do you need my approval?”

Rafe’s chest swelled but Caroline cut him off: she said, “We think we can make a good place out of it, Jerr.”

She was the only one who’d ever called him that. He’d been called Jeremiah, Jerry, Jeremy, and Sliphammer. The West didn’t seem satisfied with a man until it had surrounded him with descriptive nicknames. Caroline’s father called her the Milkmaid, and truly she looked like one. Rafe was known as Wrangler Tree because his specialty was horses.

The house creaked, settling. Rafe said in a pushy, defiant voice, “Make a goddamn good horse ranch out of this outfit. Take a little cash and a lot of sweat but we’ll do it proud.”

In spite of himself Sliphammer said, “You’ll do as you see fit, I reckon, but maybe it’s a little early to chance it on your own. First of all you haven’t got the money to buy the place, and if you do it on borrowed cash all it’ll take will be one bad season to wipe you out. A man ought to have a nest egg before he goes into business on his own.”

“We’ll take the chance.”

“That’s what the last fellow thought who owned this place. Why do you think it’s up for sheriff’s auction?”

“Because the last fellow didn’t know how to run a ranch, which is not my weakness,” Rafe snapped. “For a man who’s worked for wages all his life you’re mighty free with your advice, Jeremy. I’m a married man and Caroline deserves a whole lot better than a thirty-a-month wrangler. You work your whole life for dirt wages and end up with nothing to show for it and when you die your friends got to take up a collection to bury you. That ain’t for Caroline and me.”

Caroline pushed her lower lip forward to blow hair off her forehead. Sliphammer said to her, “You agree with that?”

“If I didn’t I wouldn’t be here.”

“Hell,” said Rafe, “I got to admit it was Caroline’s idea in the first place.”

I should have known, Sliphammer thought. What he said was, “With a little luck I guess you might make it.” There was no point in arguing with them.

“Bet your ass we’ll make it,” said Rafe. Caroline blushed, and Sliphammer found that faintly surprising.

Rafe lifted his arm and pointed. “Somebody coming.”

Sliphammer turned to follow his gaze. He had to tip his head to get the sun out of his eyes. A rider was coming down the blossoming slope, neither hurrying nor wasting time. Rafe said, “Looks like your boss.”

It was in fact the sheriff, Bob Paul. He had a pinched, exasperated look on his heavy-jowled face. Paul had spent his whole life in the saddle but he still managed to look like a sack of potatoes on horseback. He was a rounded man, rounded everywhere: his thighs looked soft, his shoulders were matronly, his darkly beard-slurred face was puffy. He was a solemn, slow-moving man, a good sheriff, an acceptable boss, a casual friend.

Paul’s greeting was dour. “The one day in the year I really need you, you’re galivant-ing way the hell out here. Don’t you thank I’ve got better thangs to do than chase all over Pima County thew this heat? H’are you, Wrangler? Missus Caroline?”

Paul touched his hat. Sliphammer was smiling, not rising to the bait; he said mildly, “Even us slaves get a day off now and then.”

Paul removed his hat and wiped his face in the crook of his sleeve. “My frin, I’m jis gonna have to hang a bell on you.”

“I repeat,” Sliphammer said good-humoredly, “it’s my day off. You want to talk to me today, pay me an extra two dollars.”

“Ain’t nothing like a loyal deputy,” Paul complained with a great show of indignation. “And as for these kin of yours, you ever notice how these young folks lose all their manners? Ain’t nobody invited me to step down and take a little drank.”

Rafe said, “You’re welcome to light down. There’s nothing to drink here until somebody deans out the well. Or you can go down to the spring.”

Paul climbed down with a fat man’s sigh. “Get that well fixed soon as somebody buys the place at auction next month. You still in the market?”

“Bet your ass.”

“Likely you’ll have to scramble some, then. Get yoseff plenty of money. Fellow from Prescott’s gonna brang me a bid of three thousand dollars, I hear.”

Rafe’s face fell. Caroline said, “Three thousand?”

“That’s what I heard,” said Paul, and turned toward Sliphammer. “Rat now you and me got binness.”

“It’s still my day off.”

“Neither one of us gonna get no more days off for a while, Jeremy. We got ourselves a little chore up to Colorado.”