The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 14
NEARING surprised the three adventurers next morning by a full endorsement of their plan for taking up homesteads in the valley above the ranch. The country was coming to it, he said; all around the Diamond Tail farmers were beginning to cut up the land. There was no wisdom in the cattlemen's further contention with them, for the farmers would win in the end, the day of vast herds on the public domain was fast coming to a close.
Further than that, he offered them the use of his teams and hay-making machinery, the latter already stored in a shed on the fenced land from which the Iowa grangers had been driven. Give him a few tons of hay if they felt like it in return for the use of the machinery; that was as much as he asked. He advised them to get at their hay-making at once, as the time between then and frost was short.
Speechless in amazement as they were over this generous offer, Gustin and Grubb still had suspicion of something behind it that would not be so comfortable. They had expected to fight for the land. They believed now that Nearing had some scheme of his own of which they were designed to be the victims.
Barrett did not share this distrust. To him there appeared to be in the cattleman's concession the thought and deed of a man who felt his consequence departing from him, the uselessness of further struggle against inevitable defeat. For, light as he tried to make his spirits appear that morning, Nearing was a changed man. His doom seemed over him, the shadow of it at his feet.
Grubb was not to be cheated out of his security by the unstable assurance of a cowman's word. He insisted on going to Saunders to consult his shrewd friend, Charley Thomson, interview the government land agent, and make entry in due and legal form for himself, at least. The others could go down when the hay-cutting was over and get their papers.
So it was agreed. Barrett and Dan were to go that morning and take possession of the fenced lands, tinker up the machinery and start cutting hay.
Dan Gustin was gay as he made ready for the start after Fred had swallowed his breakfast like a snake and gone his way to Saunders. Barrett enjoyed no such lightness of heart. The threat of tragedy that hung over that peaceful-seeming home reached out to him as one numbered in the climax of accumulated secrets, troubles and deceits, soon to fall as a thunderbolt among them.
Nearing had not been called upon before to play his part in the eyes of one to whom his duplicity was known. Bravely as he had carried concealed under his mantle, the fox that had gnawed away his vitals, he was breaking under fear of discovery at last. This morning he was haggard and gray, thin of cheek, restless of eye; a man baffled in his wild desire to rid himself of the thing that stood between him and his peace. He did not refer to the preceding night's scene between him and Barrett as he drew the young man aside while Dan was hitching the team.
"To all appearances you men will be working for me," Nearing said. "Nobody's likely to bother you this fall under that arrangement, but I can't answer for what may happen to you next spring when you begin to plow, if you stick to it that long. You're pretty close to the edge of our range up there, somebody from the outside may come along and take a shot at you, even the Diamond Tail boys may cut loose when they find you're not hired by me. They resent the coming of the grangers more than the cattlemen themselves. It means cutting them loose from the only trade they know."
Barrett said that, for himself, he did not know that the experiment would extend beyond the hay-making. From what he had heard of the winters in that country, the prospect was not alluring.
So they parted, Barrett taking along his saddlehorse at Nearing's generous urging. Not a word was said between them of the past; not a hint of the future which that gray, half-defeated, baffled man must face and fight in his own way alone.
Dan found himself out of tobacco that evening, and Barrett was little better stocked. On Dan's suggestion that they ride to Bonita and replenish supplies for the busy days ahead of them, they saddled and set out.
Not much had been accomplished that day, for neither of them ever had been introduced to a mowing machine before. Barrett was the one who finally solved the question of getting the sickle bar down to engage the grass, and getting it up again to pass over an obstruction.
Dan had turnea the machine over to him with that, as a tribute to his mechanical genius, saying that the simple, skeleton construction of a rake was nearer his understanding. They had haggled off a few acres of grass by sunset, but such labor as that was little more than play to them, tough as both of them were.
"I want to introduce you to a friend of mine," Dan proposed. "You've heard me speak of her—Cattle Kate."
Barrett expressed more delight over the prospect than he felt, although he had a well defined curiosity to see this queen of the range, whose name was familiar in every cowpuncher's mouth for a hundred miles or more, he had been told. Thus, with the anticipation of delight on one hand, of a rather commonplace adventure on the other, the two friends rode into Bonita, the place that Fred Grubb had described as a louse clinging to the border of the military reservation.
Bonita was a place of few houses ranged along the road that divided the military reservation from the unrestricted part of that country. It had drawn as close to the source of its sustenance as it was geographically possible for it to do, and there it lay waiting with its doors open like gaping mouths, to swallow such victims as came its way.
It was a place proscribed, a pitfall of iniquities, where enlisted men from the post came to revel away their pay; to which cowpunchers and wranglers rode incredible distances to break the lonely monotony of their lives. The place was no better and no worse than scores of its kind that have flourished and passed away. A small tributary of the river ran down behind it, the highroad before its door, and there Cattle Kate Medford kept the hotel, her father the saloon that was an important part of it.
Barrett and Dan arrived in Bonita long after nightfall, when the limited round of its entertainment was well under way. Several horses were ranged along the hitching rack before the hotel, many saddles lay on the porch to show that guests had come to stay the night out, and other nights out, until their money was done.
In spite of Dan's enlargement upon the attractions of Cattle Kate, Barrett was not thinking of her as he swung to the ground before her door. He was wondering, with a heaviness in his heart and gloom depressing him, whether Nearing had caught Dale Findlay off his guard that day, and balanced his shameful account.
Cattle Kate kept a small general store in the reception room, or office, of the hotel. There one might buy candy, kerchiefs for the neck; ammunition, clothing, peanuts, spurs; all the gauds and necessities in demand among the buckos of the range. In this little store, with the hotel counter on one side, chairs for loungers all around, Cattle Kate met Dan Gustin and his friend.
Cattle Kate, as Barrett had been given to understand by Dan as they journeyed to meet her, had gained her name and fame as a range rider in the days when her father was in the cattle business. His business, it appeared, had been chiefly with the cattle of other men, to such extent that he had been mewed up a certain number of years in the state's corral to break him of the habit.
This had left a bitterness and vengeful spirit in his daughter, Cattle Kate, who was now the avowed encmy of every cattle baron between the Elk Mountains and the Black Hills. So much Dan thought necessary to tell his friend, to post him against any eccentricities of the young lady which were pretty sure to spring from her hot and handy tongue.
For all cowpunchers and grangers Cattle Kate had the hand of hospitality always extended. There was nothing in her stock a cowpuncher couldn't have, money or no money; his word was as good as a baron's bond. But if a crook tried to beat her, Cattle Kate was better than a lawyer at collecting. She had a little brassbound code of her own. Dan declared with all solemnity that she could clip a man's ear at forty feet and never muss his hair.
From this picturesque preparation Barrett expected to meet something more she-devilish than appeared in a little white apron at the partition door behind which the tables of the dining-room were to be seen. Cattle Kate was a stocky young woman of perhaps twenty-eight, with a buffalo-like look about her head and shoulders. Her face was broad and masculine, her skin fair and freckled; her heavy black hair, ringletted like shavings from a carpenter's plane, was cut to fall to the nape of her neck. It was held back from her forehead by a long, curved comb, called a roach-comb in that time.
Her formidable bill-collector was not in sight, nothing more repellent than the broad, starched strings of her little apron was about her ample waist. She smiled as she shook hands with Dan, greeting him with quick, glad word; and smiled, a different smile altogether, when she gave Barrett her hand.
One would not expect to find phases in this woman, Barrett thought, but there was as much difference between smile and smile as wind and calm. His was a tentative smile, an acceptance on condition, an arms'-length-off smile. Dan Gustin's went to him warm out of the middle of her partial heart.
Here was a girl known to hundreds of wild devils, honest man and thief, soldier and civilian, addressed familiarly by all of them, yet a good girl, as Barrett knew by that unfathomable something that stands in an honest woman's eyes. He felt an unaccountable gratification over this discovery; it seemed to him that he had found something precious in an unexpected place.
And she knew, as well as he knew, that he was not of the kind that commonly came to her door. Fred Grubb had said she knew the secrets of the range, that she could tell a man many things. Barrett wondered if she could tell him what it was Dale Findlay knew. If she did know this, she would have to think tenderly of a man before he could get the key of the secret from her hand.
"You boys had supper?" she asked. Finding they had not, she at once disappeared to provide it.
There was one other belated guest eating supper when Cattle Kate summoned the two waiting customers into the dining-room. This man sat across the room from the table to which the hostess escorted Barrett and Dan, the light of the swinging lamp strong over him. As they took their places Dan leaned over the table and whispered:
"That's Charley Thomson, the big lawyer."
Not much outward indication of greatness about the man, Barrett thought, viewing him with renewed interest. Thomson was arrayed as usual, his rusty black coat over an untidy woolen shirt, but his gray-streaked black hair was combed to a smoothness that scarcely would have given a fly a footing. He seemed to carry his attitude of sarcastic contempt to the table with him, eating as though he scorned the operation, and bent to it only as one of the contemptible conventions of the world which custom bound him to serve.
"Must have some big case he's up here lookin' after, gettin' witnesses or something," said Dan. "Fred'll miss him; he'll have to go to somebody else."
"It don't look to me like he'd missed much," Barrett said, offhand and unimpressed.
"They never hang a man that's got Charley Thomson for a lawyer," Dan whispered, cautious as if eulogy were a thing distasteful to the great lawyer's ears. Dan watched him with admiration as he forked large pieces of steak into his fish-like mouth. "What do you suppose he charges for gittin' a man off for a shootin', Ed?"
"Not much, I'd say."
"Three to five thousand!" said Dan, delivering it triumphantly.
"You'd think he'd blow himself for a new shirt and collar, then," said Barrett.
"He wouldn't be the same man in a stiff collar, Ed. I don't believe he could pull the same in any other rig."
Dan himself was not the same with that impressive legal magnate so near at hand. His mind was so full of him, his eyes so fastened on him, that he had to seek the familiar road to his mouth with slow hand. Barrett looked to see him jab out his eye with his fork. A man had achieved fame, indeed, thought Barrett, when he could move by his mere presence such a vast feeling of respect and awe.
When Thomson finished his meal he took the greasy old flop-brimmed black hat from a corner of the table, put it on as if to announce that his service of convention was at an end, looked savagely about his immediate vicinity to make sure that no valuables were being left behind, and went out. He went with considerable haste, one hand in his trousers pocket, the skirt of his long coat pushed back from his rusty leg, as if pressed by the obligation of immediate payment for what he had consumed.
"He's headin' for the bar," Dan said. "Takes a drink before eatin' and after eatin', and every little while between. If you was to shut his whisky off he'd die in a day."
"If I had him against me I'd send him a barrel," Barrett said.
"Wouldn't make a bit of difference to Charley; he'd only drink so much in a day. You can't get him drunk, Ed, no more than you can drownd a frog. I went to sce him about killin' a feller the day I met you in Saunders."
"The devil you did!" Looking up in astonishment at the confession so frankly and casually made.
"Charley wouldn't take the case. Said to kill him first and then come to see him. But he said it wasn't no game for a cowpuncher like me, and I tell you, Ed, I believed him when he told me what it cost. So that's why that man's a livin' now."
"Was it another man, or"
"Same one, Ed. Foreman of my bunch, little pock-marked, tow-headed devil with his front teeth slantin' out like a roof from pullin' on dried beef they used to feed him and bring him up on when he was a kid down in Texas. Wasn't worth it, Ed. I wouldn't give three to five thousand dollars to shoot that man if I had as much money as Hal Nearing."
"I don't believe you'd get that much fun out of it," Barrett returned, his own conscience still unquiet, still under the melancholy cloud of the deed necessity had set to his hand.
"I'd like to know what old Charley's up here in Bonita for," Dan ran on, unable to get away from the remarkable event. "Nobody ain't been killed up here lately that'd be worth his time to fool with."
The question of the lawyer's presence in Bonita appeared to be answered in part, at least, when the two friends left the dining-room. Dale Findlay and Thomson were lighting cigars from the box of the best brand Cattle Kate sold. Shoulder to shoulder, Thomson talking in his low droning voice, the pair left the hotel, walking away together in the dark.
Dan's mystification, astonishment, curiosity, combined in his face in a speechless stare. He turned from Kate to Barrett; from Barrett back again to Kate. She smiled, understanding him better than if he had expressed his thoughts with his lips.
"I wouldn't like to be the man that's got to pay the bill," said Dan, turning from the door, where he had stood a little while looking after the illustrious pair.
Barrett left his friend leaning over the cigar case, Cattle Kate with elbows on it across from him, their heads rather close together. It seemed to be Dan's night, there being no immediate competition. Barrett wondered if there could be a man for every horse, to say nothing of every saddle on Cattle Kate's porch, in town. He concluded presently that there was, basing the conclusion entirely on the burst of noise that issued from the little dance hall at the farther end of the one-sided street.
In this a band of three Italians supplied the music that was only incidental to the beating of boot-heels, and loud calling of the figures of the quadrille. Barrett looked a moment through the open door upon a scene such as he had witnessed with variations, and no elaborate ones at that, in many quarters of the globe.
Long ago this sort of diversion had lost its novelty for him, seasoned veteran in spite of his years. He turned back toward the peace and quiet of the white-painted plank hotel, thinking of the two men who had walked from its door a little while before.
A pair to draw to, Dale Findlay and that man. What sort of an evil scheme might hatch under their joint brooding no man could tell, but it would be a heavy bill for somebody, as Dan had said. The harried, gaunt-growing face of Hal Nearing presented itself with the thought. Barrett began to feel a great pity for the man, a great desire to take hold of the tangle of his life with him and help clear away the encumbering wreckage.
Back to the hotel, to find Dan and Cattle Kate still in their close conference across the showcase glass. Barrett sat on the steps, the light from the door dimly on the heap of saddles close at hand, to wait for his friend to conclude this pleasant interlude in his too barren life.
As always, the question of what next in the affairs of the Diamond Tail presented itself to Barrett. Plainly, things could not be allowed to run on as they were going, Nearing seeking in his insane way to end by violence the evil charm of this secret in his life which no man could share; Findlay elusive as the wind before him, hedged about by guards at every turn, Even tonight the hound-faced man and his partner were in Bonita, dancing with the poor scarecrow drabs in the dive up the road.
Barrett chafed under the inactivity of a single hour. Nearing had refused his offer of co-operation, fearful of discovery; in the desperation of his fear he had drawn his weapon to slay him in his own dooryard. What next? Where to take hold of this repellent tangle of Nearing's life without bringing down the disgrace which the cattleman bartered his soul to avert? For spare the man, small of soul, cowardly, treacherous and dishonest as Barrett knew him to be, this robbed stockholder desired now above all.
Not for Nearing's sake. For the memory of a swift hand fleeting softly down his arm to clasp his fingers; for the memory of wrong generously admitted, and made right in a quick word out of the heart.
Dan was obliged to yield his monopoly of Cattle Kate presently by the arrival of more customers to swell the tide of business in Bonita. These were cowboys from a ranch some fifty or sixty miles distant, some of them known to Dan. They greeted him hilariously, and carried him off to the saloon which was part of Cattle Kate's establishment run by her father. Barrett dodged them by sneaking off in the dark.
It appeared that Dan was in for a night of it now, for presently Barrett saw him making for the dance hall with the others. In that place of diversion another saloon was maintained, with games of chance to comb up whatever loose change might escape the rest. Barrett knew that Dan would come home like a roaming dog in his own time. He had no inclination to join him in his revelries.
As Barrett rode back to the squat log cabin in the hay meadows, his gloomy forebodings of failure attended him. Numerous schemes for taking up his purpose from a new angle presented, only to dissolve in the test of application. There seemed to be but one way to save the investors in the Elk Mountain Cattle Company, himself in particular, from complete loss without bringing Nearing down to a fearful and unknown disgrace. Foolish as it appeared to him, senseless, unbelievable, this could be accomplished only in the killing of a man.
Barrett rebelled against the weakness of this argument. To him it seemed so insanely unreasonable that no man should have either the effrontery to advance it or the credulity to accept it. Yet he had accepted it, he did accept it. Dale Findlay must die. To save Nearing's honor, from what blotch of horrible stain only two men knew, that close-mouthed, dark-souled man must be shot like a wolf.
Imagine the situation, said Barrett, fuming and fevered in his rebellious, indignant mind. A hireling thief must be kept in a position where he could go on robbing with impunity, because one man had transgressed in some monstrous deed, the secret of which was Findlay's. And a man could not be shot out of hand, without excuse or justification, without strong provocation of some kind. True, Findlay had attempted Barrett's life. On that score Findlay's life was forfeit to him; for his future security he might shoot Findlay on sight and probably walk clear in the law. But there was no desire in him to do this, unmanly as such an attitude might seem.
Barrett felt himself to be in a blind lane, against the barriers of which he would wear himself out lunging to find an opening. Better to sleep on it, he reasoned; let it rest until tomorrow. He put it aside from his contrivings and speculations, and spread his blankets on new hay, and slept.