The Overlanders

Scrape away their possessions, peel them down mother-naked, there’d be little to choose from between Grete Farraday and cattle king Crotton. Both were men who never backed down — who, knowing what they wanted, took the shortest route. But there was a difference. Crotton had what he wanted. He aimed to hang onto it.

He could ride all day and never get off his own range.

When you came right down to the brass tacks of the business it was this matter of range — of grass pure and simple — that had been back of the bust-up which had given the smaller roundabout spreads their first real chance to draw a full breath in years.

Grass, come right down to it, was all Crotton thought about — grass, and more Crotton cows to put onto it. That old sonofabitch wouldn’t grant a prairie dog room for a burrow! It was what they all said.

Grete Farraday had finally got around to agreeing with them. But not until he’d had the facts of it pounded home to him. Up to then he’d more or less gone along with Crotton’s notion grass was “fer them as can grab aholt and hang onto it.” The shoe hadn’t pinched till Grete got ready to pull it on.

For several years now he’d been ramrod for Crotton at a good round figure, most of which had gone into the bank. He wasn’t getting no damn younger, country was filling up — even out on the no-account edges, and it had suddenly come over Grete, by God, it was time he was getting a wiggle on!

Plenty of owners had staked their top hands to one thing or another. He’d been a valuable man to Swallowfork, had had more than just something to do with it getting there. Experience had warned you couldn’t count much on gratitude, but he had kind of figured they could make a deal of some sort. At the end of one long bitch of a day he’d gone up to see Crotton.

“I’m striking off on my own.”

Crotton’s hard eyes looked him over bright and narrowed. “In a couple of years…”

“I’m kind of set on doing it now.”

Crotton dug out a pair of tumblers and a bottle. He set them up, stowing his away in one great apple-bobbin’ gurgle. Grete sampled his and eyed the old bastard with a grudging respect. His gut felt like a bay steer had caught a hoof in it. Crotton growled, “All the best land’s gone. Where the hell would you locate?”

“I got my eye on a piece.”

“Some sodbuster’s grant? Them boys’ll make you hard to find.”

Farraday refused to let the Old Man needle him. “I been thinking about cattle.”

Crotton laughed.

Farraday got a little tight about the mouth. “I figure with a hundred head —”

“Shoestring!” Crotton snorted. “Damn country’s overrun with greasy sackers now! Snot-nosed kids — women that look like they been drawed through a knothole! That what you’re buckin’ fer?”

Grete hadn’t any too good a hold on his patience but he buckled his teeth around the words that reared up, chewed his cheek for a minute, then managed with an amazing mildness to say, “Vruthers set his top screw up with —”

“Vruthers! Jesus H. Christ!” Crotton jumped up, breaking wind like a mare clearing a three-rail fence. “Don’t compare me to that old woman! I ain’t about to start —”

“Nobody said you was,” Farraday growled. “I was just —”

“An’ if you think fer one minute…”

“For God’s sake let me say what I was going to!”

“Don’t snarl at me, you two-bit ingrate!” Veins stood out like ropes on Crotton’s face. His chest heaved. The knuckles stuck out of his fists white as bone. “I shoulda seen all this,” he said like Abraham discovering the viper. “I shoulda seen it comin’ when I took you outa the hands of that Mex firin’ squad —”

“By hell, you got your money’s worth, mister!”

“It ain’t his ass hangin’ out of his pants makes a little man little. It’s what he’s got under his hair — like you, plain bone!” Crotton roared. “How far do you reckon you could get without me?”

It was the contempt in his voice, in those mean little eyes — the whole bullheaded arrogant look of him, that burned the last stayrope of Farraday’s caution. He swung at the man, knocked him back and spread-eagled him against the wall with a crash that shook the whole house. The whites of Crotton’s eyes rolled like a ringy bronc’s. With a tremendous shout he leaped away from the wall, but Grete knew better than to let those bear-thick arms lay hold on him. He dragged his gun. He shoved it into Crotton’s belly. “Back off.”

It seemed for a second as though the cowman would grab him anyway. The murderous flush fell away from his features and he let his arms come down, but he didn’t step back and Farraday knew he never would.

“Get out!” Crotton growled, and it seemed to come clear from his boot tops. “Get out an’ keep goin’. There’s no room for you here —”

“We’ll see,” Farraday grinned. “You ain’t the first damn hog I ever known. No matter how big you get there’ll always be somebody that’s a little bit bigger.”

“You’re done in this country,” Crotton choked. “Ride out!”

• • •

Good advice, Farraday reckoned, thinking back on it now. But a man had his pride. He had started his spread right under their noses. Good land, real good — finest mountain-hemmed meadow in Crotton’s Swallowfork iron. Every nickel Grete had went into it. They let him get the place built. How the old bastard must have laughed, he thought, cursing. They’d burned his shack, knocked his corrals into kindling — damned near got his hide on the fence. Probably would have, he figured, if Crotton had been along.

Perhaps the old pirate couldn’t stomach the watching. More like he hadn’t yet discovered Grete had filed on that lush meadow. He sure as hell was going to!

Or maybe Crotton did know. Maybe he figured this much of a lesson would be just as good as putting a slug through him, that Grete would be so almighty thankful to get out with his health he wouldn’t stop this side of Panama.

In a way he didn’t blame Crotton too much — it was that kind of country. All the old bastard had was a sixshooter title. Fear of Crotton’s gunnies was all that was keeping Swallowfork intact. If the threat of Crotton’s wrath were set aside one time, every sucker he’d put the spurs to or scared away would come a-runnin’.

But Crotton shouldn’t have made a fool of him — Grete could imagine the grins going round as men discussed his short tenure as an owner. It was plain he couldn’t buck Crotton without he had help. He’d get no help in Arizona. Not even Curly Bill — and he could mass a hundred riders — wanted any piece of a Swallowfork hoedown. Bill’s style was hit and run. He wasn’t about to try anything that would put King Crotton after him.

Grete didn’t want Bill’s kind of help anyway. Too unreliable, too hard to get shut of. He had in mind tying up with some really big auger, some brand that was just as skookum as Swallowfork but would leave him the part of Crotton’s range he had filed on.

What Grete really wanted was enough hard cash for guns and wire — apt to come high back in Arizona in the shadow of Swallowfork. He’d been hoping to get hold of some here in New Mexico but would go, by God, clean to Texas if he had to.

He’d got around to thinking in terms of Murphy-Dolan, a pair of sharp customers kicking up dust along the Pecos. According to all tell they’d just about got the store business cornered and was branching out now into horses and cattle. For a toehold on Swallowfork they might be nudged into giving him a hand.

This, leastways, was what he’d been counting on; but Lincoln County was clear the other side of nowhere. Another night was closing in, the fifth he’d put behind him; and any time at all it might come into Crotton’s head to put a man of his own into Farraday’s meadow and pre-empt that quarter section around the springs Grete’s claim was filed on. They could pass it around he had pulled his freight, and no white-collared clerk was going to stand off a man like Crotton.

Farraday cursed. He could talk about going clean to Texas but he didn’t have anything like that much time. It could damned well be too late already! If he only kept on to Murphy-Dolan’s he was going to have to cross the Jornada, that dreaded Journey to Death desert most wayfarers skirted as they would the plague. Take another full day and maybe half a night and — without he’d been lied to — not a drop of water on it.

He shook his canteen which, by the slosh, was half-empty. He knew he had scarce enough grub for one feed; but it was the dun had him worried. He scowled at the billowing golden haze which he knew was blown sand touched up by the last dying shafts of the sun. Wind out there could blow your goddamn pants off. A fool’s gamble, he reckoned; but he had come too far to be turned aside now.

He kicked the gelding ahead and then pulled up, staring.

The sun was suddenly gone. Coming out of the swirling dust like gray ghosts were the heads-down, shambling shapes of spent horses, two or three practically staggering.

Hearing no sound, Farraday rubbed his eyes to see if he was dreaming; but still they came, plodding out of that murk, grotesquely, incredibly — not mustangs but hot-bloods! He cursed in astonishment as more and still more of them come out of the dust.

Now a stallion flung up his head in hoarse challenge, a shift in the wind fetching the sound to Grete faintly. The gelding, crouched between Grete’s knees, trembled. The hot-bloods stopped, wheeling uncertainly, their manes streaming out like ragged banners in the gloom. A wagon appeared with high sides and tarp roof, riders abruptly materializing back of it.

Grete counted four and caught the glint of shifted rifles; saw two of the riders spur out to cut around the stock and hold it — a needless precaution to Grete’s way of thinking. The remaining pair sat motionless, considering him with a rock-hard attention as, with lifted hand, he put the dun toward them.

“What outfit’s this?” he asked, coming up.

No one spoke for a couple of minutes. Then the elder of the pair, a man gaunt enough to have climbed through the gut of a needle, swiveled an amber-flecked stare and made an irritable shift of his weight in the saddle. “You got a plaster on this chunk of hell?”

Farraday, grinning, folded his hands on the horn in token of his peacefulness and shook his head. “Nope. Just seeing the country, as the feller said. You have any trouble making the crossing at the Pecos?”

The gaunt man looked as though it hadn’t got through to him. The other one said with a willful arrogance: “Burn him down, Idaho!”

It whipped Farraday’s tightening look around. Before he could wheel or put his resentment in words the voice of a woman came out of the wagon. “What is it, Ben? What does he want?”

The bull-chested one said, “Another damn rustler —”

Farraday’s knees drove the dun hard against him; but as Grete reached for the fellow, the gaunt one said, “You tired of livin’, mister?”

Looking down the bore of that Henry repeater Farraday reluctantly backed the dun off. It was the chunky man did the crowding now. Beefy jowls gone dark with blocked spleen, he was rearing back in the safety of that rifle to fistmark Grete when the voice from the wagon said under his elbow, “I’ll handle this, Ben.”

His nibs didn’t like it but the girl didn’t seem to care about this. In her middle twenties, there was something indefinable about her which, by Farraday’s lights, did not fit a proper lady. It had nothing to do with her appearance which was lanky, crisp, redheaded. She had a pinto vest clapped round her and a .44 riding the swell of one hip.

She sized Grete up with a tightening look and the red mouth below the smoky hue of that glance turned hard as a well-chain. “What do
you
want?”

“Pardon me all to hell,” Grete scowled. “Must be Sidewinder Day where you come from!”

The chunky Ben, leaning down with a snarl, was fixing to put in his oar when she said: “Be still.” Bold eyes raked Grete’s face with a livening interest. “What
are
you here for?”

“Counted on getting me some dope about the Pecos.”

She said, too quick, “We didn’t come by the Pecos,” and their eyes gripped and locked, Farraday’s openly calling her a liar, mocking her, diving bright with malice to the pasterns of Ben’s horse. She looked at the crusted mud on its fetlocks and the red mouth curved in a slow wide smile. She stepped back a piece, watching him. “We’ll eat here, Idaho. Have Barney get a fire started.” When the man went off she said, “I’ll talk with you.”

The chunky Ben had hell in his gullet. Cheeks thinned with anger, he said, fingering the butt of his pistol, “No, by God! We’ll have no truck with rustlers!”

The girl’s head came around. “Are you running this now?”

“Time I did, by the looks. As your closest relation —”

“I wouldn’t presume on that, Ben.” Still-faced, she looked up at him. “When I want your advice I’ll ask for it.” She said to Grete, “We’ll talk in the wagon.”

He swung down, letting go of the reins. Ignoring the man’s affronted scowl he moved along in her wake, trying to work some of the saddle cramp out of his legs while openly admiring the natural swing of her hips. He climbed after her into the bed of the wagon, feeling the lurch of it, catching the shine of her hair in the match’s flare, watching her poking its flame in a lantern. There was a bunk, a stove for heat, and a bank of built-in cupboards. She pushed a hand toward the bunk. “Sit down. I’m Sary Hollis.” Her eyes came around and up at him coolly. “Flying H.”

“Grete Farraday,” he said, not trying the bunk, not bothering either to take off his hat.

She wasn’t his idea of pretty. Her jaw was too square, the red mouth too determined. She looked tired, he thought, as he looked her over. Probably was. But the queer something he had sensed from the start of this business was still riding her, crackling through her tone like broken branches.

“Would it help if I undressed?”

He felt the heat in his cheeks. “Reckon,” he said, “I asked for that,” and, ducking his head, put out a foot for the step.

“You said you were traveling…”

He twisted to look at her.

“Are you free to take a job or are you one of those pilgrims who can’t work for a woman?”

“I’ve got about all the job I can handle.”

He turned again to leave and once more her words laid hold of him. “I could make it worth your while.”