Nelson Nye - Rafe

His voice was rough as the look on his face. He was big, heavy-set, with great slabs for hands. His chaps-covered legs appeared thick as fence posts. Menace and suspicion peered through slitted eyes as he set up his horse in a slather of grit. "When I ask a man somethin' he damn well better answer!"

Rafe, with both hands over the knob of his saddle, said, "I'm huntin' a job—"

"And I'm a Chinaman's uncle!"

Rafe wasn't going to take issue on that, though he thought to himself the guy looked more like a chimp with his long fat nose and stringy mustache staggling over that steel-trap slit of a mouth. Even his ears stuck out like an ape's and his winkless, red-veined eyes were about as readable as rock. He was certainly a beauty.

This guy said, like he was talking to a fool, "I guess you don't believe in signs. I guess you're one of them as has to be showed—"

"What signs?" Rafe said, and Frozenface got right up in his stirrups like he was more than some minded to take bodily hold of him. Before he could do so another voice said, "What you got there, Jess?"

Frozenface, never for an instant taking his look off Rafe, growled, "Another damn drifter! It's gettin' so a man can't put a foot out of doors without stumblin' over some goddamn saddle bum! I say it's time, by Gawd, we was stringin' up a few!"

"You know the old man wouldn't hold still for that—"

"Who's to tell? A guy with a choke strap round his neck ain't—"

"We don't have to do that. Take his stuff, put him afoot and haze him off into the dunes like you done the rest of them," the newcomer said; and something about the sound, some inflection of his voice, pulled Rafe's face about.

His jaw fell open. " Duck! " he cried with his eyes lighting up, and would have sent Bathsheba straightaway over except that, before he could do it, a gun snout jabbed hard against his ribs. A gate-hinge growl advised, "Set right still if you don't want them guts blowed hell west an' crooked!"

In the whirl and churn of Rafe's confused thoughts there was just enough savvy to understand he was about as close to planting as a man could come and still keep breathing. This dark faced Jess, if that order were ignored, wouldn't hesitate a minute. It was more reflex, however, than any conscious intention that caused Rafe's legs to lock the mare in her tracks. His glance stayed riveted on the handsome dandy in the bottle-green coat, stock and tall beaver hat who, in white cheeked dismay, stared incredulously back.

Chagrin—almost a sickness—peered out of that weasel-like handsome face. Consternation crept into the bloodless look of it, and a wildness sprang into the fright-widened eyes as Rafe said, "Hell, don't you know your own brother?"

The man glared back, rebelliously shaking his head. He licked his lips and tried to pull himself together. "I have no brother."

"Mean to say you ain't Duke Bender?"

An ugly red flamed up through the other's face. His cheeks became mottled and he said, thick with fury, "I'm Bender, all right—"

"You never had no brother Rafe?"

The man said harshly, "He was killed in the war."

Rafe just looked at him. Slowly his lip curled, seeing the hate and shame in that face, the trembling fright. "By God, you'd like to believe that, wouldn't you!"

Bender bristled. "I don't know what your game is, feller, but you sure as hell ain't no brother of mine. Rafe was killed in the war. We got a paper to prove it!"

V

Rafe sat there numbly trying to figure this out. They maybe did have a paper; it wouldn't be the first time mistakes of that nature had been made during the confusions of fighting a war. But the scared incredulity of Duke's first look was still bright in front of him, making a mockery of all that had been said. Duke recognized him sure as hell; and there was one more thing you couldn't hardly get around: his brother didn't want Rafe climbing out of no grave to stand between him and what he figured he had coming when the Old Man went.

It made Rafe pretty sick. Back on the farm he'd found excuses for the boy, ways of glossing over, covering up the things he'd done, knowing Duke wasn't bad, only thinner-skinned than most, too quick to lay hold of notions that pleased him, a sight too gullible, too easy steered.

He'd always been one to find the shortest way out when things began to bog up. Aside from his folks nobody ever, back home, had called him anything but "Duck"—which had sure used to make Rafe Bender boil.

He sighed, thinking back, seeing how they had spoiled him, never making the boy face up to his problems. Now the boy was a man, still hugging kids' notions, still bound and determined every guy and his uncle was out of step but him. It made a pretty ugly picture.

"Well..." Spangler said when nobody else seemed minded to speak, "I reckon that settles that." He flashed Rafe a hard grin. "You heard him. Git down."

Rafe looked at his brother. "We'll hear what Maw has to say on the subject."

He'd been prepared for Duke's sneer but not for the venom, the cold slashing scorn that came out of Duke's voice like a whip when he said, "If you was Rafe you'd of damn well knowed better'n that!"

"Maw..." Dread climbed into Rafe's throat. "You—you means Maw's—" He couldn't bring the word out.

"Rafe," Duke said, like it was purest gospel, "put the coffin together and help me bury her!"

Rafe's jaw fell open. He sat there too shocked, too bewildered by so bald-faced a lie, to do more than goggle. And he was still hard at it when Duke in a kind of choked voice snarled, "Get rid of him!" and, whirling his mount, spurred off like he couldn't get out of sight quick enough.

"All right, you," Spangler said, crowding his horse up against Bathsheba. "You comin' outa that saddle or hev I—"

Rafe, mild as milk and with his mind, by the look, caught up in some backwash of painful memories, pushed out his crippled paw in a kind of feeble protest. Being Rafe's right hand it naturally drew Spangler's notice, his sharpened interest showing in the relaxing of his muscles as his stare took in the uselessness of stiffened clawlike fingers.

"I reckon not," Rafe murmured, his drawl gone cold as froglegs; and only then, too late, did the Bender range boss spy the swift-enlargening barrel of the gun coming at him like a bat out of Carlsbad in the stranger's other fist. Cursing, he tried, but there was no time left to get his head out of the way. He went out of the saddle like a shotgunned duck.

*****

Built in the days when the danger of Apaches was a very real and ever present pearl, the Ortega Grant headquarters looked not unlike a fort. Constructed of sun-baked adobes, the buildings were laid out in the form of a square, interconnecting, about a central court or patio. The name, Su Casa , was carved deep into the huge beam above the main gate, and the portals themselves were made of squared logs held together and hinged with straps of hand-hammered iron. The massive bastioned outer walls were three feet through and additionally strengthened by ramparts where the peons of the original owners could mount a withering defense. The old guard rooms, though crammed now with a dusty cobwebbed clutter of odds and ends, were still habitable at either side of the puerta , Rafe observed as he rode Bathsheba through the portals and came, not unnoticed, into the courtyard.

Here within the unpierced walls which had closed them off from the world outside, Ortega's family and retainers had lived a secluded life of their own. He could imagine dark faces curiously peering from the cell-like rooms lining the four sides of the patio and, almost, he could hear the pigs and goats foraging for scraps among the squawking flutter of scurrying hens that fled from beneath the skewbald's hoofs.