Nelson Nye - Rafe

The banker showed his dentures. "When a man works for me I take care of him. Now what are you going to do?"

"I don't see that I got much choice," Rafe said bitterly.

IV

The sun, dropping rapidly, was near submerged in reefs of copper cloud stretching mile on mile above the western rim of sight when Rafe, aboard the skewbald, some hours later moved out of a draw and began climbing east through a straggle of stunted juniper and pear. Six weeks grass was the color of straw and hardly came higher than the mare's shaggy pasterns. Directly ahead were the dark scarps of a peak that stood up butter-like straight as a rifle, fiercely red where the light broke across a patchwork of shadows going all the way from pale blue to black. Beyond, shoved up like slabs of gray slate, loomed the spires of the Cherrycows.

Only the mare's shod hoofs and the occasional chirp of a startled bird broke the land's heavy silence that seemed laid up like stones. The brooding quiet held an eerie resentment Rafe could almost taste; and there was in him suddenly a feeling of doors being closed just ahead of him.

A wild and lonesome country, hard to get into and probably harder to get out of if the folks who lived here took a dislike to him, which they very well might if the word got around he was repping for Chilton.

More and more he was tempted to chuck it and run—but run where? And if he did get away what then of the quest that had hauled him half across a continent? Didn't he owe it to his folks to come up with them?

Of course, he'd no real proof they'd ever been in this region. The Old Man never had cottoned to cattle; in a land big as this he'd surely go into horses, or hogs maybe. Or would stubbornness have kept him back of a plow?

A lot of that stubbornness was in Rafe, too. He despised, after putting his shoulder to a wheel, to let it get away from him. Cross-grained as a mule, his old pappy had called him, and it was a heap kinder language than some of the descriptions other folks had flung after him.

Rafe sighed. A powerful lot of water had gone rolling under the bridges since that day he'd quit the Ozarks to join up with the boys in gray. Been a mighty mort of changes.

He guessed a man ought to look for the good in things. He reckoned he wouldn't of been so down on this chore if that banker hadn't told him a girl was tied into it. Danger was something you could learn to run elbows with; but if there was any one thing could really tear a man up it was a woman every time!

He had generally figured to fight clear of them. The times he hadn't was sharp in his head as any memory he'd hung onto. And twice as loud. He could still see the wide-open eyes of that Pike filly peering blue as larkspur across the ugly look of that Greener. And here he was, crowding his luck like any half-baked Boston, a-humping and a-hustling to cram himself neck deep in a deal where Hoyle and logic went straight out the window and the rules, if any, was built to drag smiles from some addlebrained female!

That was what Rafe thought.

"I ought to be bored for the simples!" he snarled, and hauled up Bathsheba in a slash of wild cursing. Any guy not ready for a string of spools should be able to see what that banker was up to with a woman in the game and the stakes big as these was. All Chilton had to do was set back and wait till Rafe or some other mushhead like him got the skids knocked out from under that foreman. He wouldn't even have to shake the dang tree! Just flatter the girl or threaten foreclosure and the whole shebang would fall right in his lap!

Rafe scowled something awful, thinking he ought to cut his string, too proud to whip out his knife to do it. He had a nagging hunch he was plumb on the threshold of times so parlous they could lose a man every tooth in his head, then beat him over the butt with a broomstick. Women and Yankees! Goddlemighty!

Yet to run in blind panic wouldn't help a heap, either. Not knowing the country how far would he get up against guys like Pike and that conniving dang banker? Both of 'em pecking more pull, probably, than a twenty-mule borax team!

Pride was fine, but it made a poor supper. Why, he didn't even know these crazy dang people! No skin off his nose if, after he got this Spangler off their backs, Chilton shoved 'em right out in the catclaw. Nobody'd appointed Rafe Bender their keeper!

Though he'd never admit it, Rafe, deep down, was a pretty decent sort. He might stick up a stage when the going got rough, even whittle a steak off somebody's cow, but the kind of deal Alph Chilton was up to looked a pretty hard thing for a man to have to live with. Mighty near bad as skinning a orphan. About as low down as a feller could get.

The whole thing gave him a kind of mental indigestion, fetching his convictions up so harsh against his needs. He didn't have to be told he was in a real bind, and he was no more anxious to get the dirt spaded over him than anybody else. A Johnny Reb could find himself powerful quick dead playing tick-tack-toe with these greedy Yank carpetbaggers.

Rafe growled and swore and sighed again. Trying to be a Christian was sure as hell a full-time job! Everybody these days was looking out for Number One. If a gent wasn't able to blow his own nose he'd likely wait a long time for someone else to do it.

He kneed Bathsheba up the trail. Juniper fled into scrub oak and piñon. Grass clumps began to show among the pear and Spanish bayonet and the land leveled off into rolling swells. Prairie chickens thrummed out of the thickets. A road-runner scuttled through the grain heavy stems of green-bladed feed and the mare came into a meadow that was just like something straight out of a dream.

Despite Alph Chilton's detailed directions Rafe could hardly believe this oasis was real. Just like in McGuffy's Reader! Green stretching every place. The soft gurgle of water drew his glance to the creek and Bathsheba, impatient, broke through a trembling screen of willows and, wading into the flow, put her head down to drink.

Rafe put together a smoke. Must be close onto forty acres, and alfalfa at that! Pulling the good smell of it deep inside him he dragged the quirly across his tongue, firing up. There hadn't been such a sight since old Jim Wolf lost his pants in a snowdrift.

Off yonder the tops of a dozen great cottonwoods threshed in the breeze whipping down off the mountains. The whirling blades of a mill fetched his look to the flat roofs of buildings over beyond a far tangle of pens.

He reckoned this layout was the sure-enough headquarters of the old Ortega grant—Gourd and Vine they was calling it now according to what Alph Chilton had told him. A hundred thousand unfenced acres. There had been more but a heap had gone into Ortega marryings and then, in bad times, considerable more had been sold. How this crop of gringos had got hold of it wasn't quite clear.

In fact, now Rafe came to think back, there seemed quite a pile of things the banker hadn't gone into. The only name dropped into their talk had been that of Spangler, the bullypuss range boss Chilton claimed was stealing them blind. Nor had the banker explained how he came to have a lien.

Increasingly uneasy, Rafe watched a rider quit the maze of pens and, circling the buildings, come on at a lope. Pitching aside the remains of his smoke Rafe eased Bathsheba up out of the creek. If that feller hadn't seen him before he certain sure did when Rafe came out of the trees.

Rafe's eyes suddenly narrowed. This galoot coming toward him looked almighty like the slab-sided bustard who'd been leading that bunch Rafe had tried to flag down before he'd wound up in the hands of Grant's bone setter.

The nearer he come the more like him he seemed. Rafe was pretty hard put to keep a rein on his temper. It didn't help none when this guy, even before he'd pulled up, yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doin'?"