The Overlanders (9 page)

Refreshed by her bath and a night between sheets Sary, awake much too early, permitted herself the luxury of dawdling abed until the sun, coming through the window’s cracked blind, shamed such an extravagant waste of good daylight. Stretching, deliciously yawning, she presently sat up and shook out her red hair, suddenly enticed by the prospect of eating in town. There’d be eggs and ham — all manner of “throat-ticklin’ grub” as Patch would scornfully have put it; and perhaps, she thought with a confusion of feelings, there would be Grete Farraday.

Still thinking about him she threw back the covers, slid her legs out from under and, pushing up, crossed the uncarpeted floor to the washstand. The mirror disclosed little she had not observed before.

She frowned, shaking her head, at what sun and dust, branch water and wind were doing to her complexion. But she gave this only a passing thought, having long ago discovered she hadn’t a face men would turn about to stare at — attractive enough — she had good eyes — but a vast way from being any step to sudden riches. She had integrity and courage, a certain amount of ingenuity; but what man, she wondered with a touch of dry humor, ever bothered to look at a woman’s character!

She poured alkaline water into the chipped basin, wet a corner of the dingy towel, and washed the sleep from her eyes. She combed out her hair and put it up, still thinking of Farraday. Turning away from the glass she got into her clothes and took the chair off the knob and stood a moment, suddenly sighing. Opening the door she took a last look around and went down the stairs.

He wasn’t in the lobby. No sign of him in the dining room. She held her disappointment under careful restraint, not at all sure of her feelings. She was giving too much thought to the man. She remembered his face, the sharp gray of his eyes, the tough way he had of sizing things up. He was opinionated, heavy-handed, entirely too… Well, too what? she asked irritably. Too ready to take his way by force? Wasn’t this why she had wanted him?

She found a table in a corner, ordering indifferently, engrossed in the enigma of human relationships. When the food came she ate it, the pleasure foreseen in the prospect unrealized. Two drummers across the room sat with papers folded at elbows, heads together, chuckling, the one with his back to her occasionally turning to reveal an appraising, speculative glance. She ignored them.

A man with handlebar mustaches and a star on his vest drifted in from outside, looked around and pulled a chair out, roughly halfway between Sary’s place and the drummers. She watched the waitress bring coffee. The man laid both elbows on the table and left the black hat on his head. “Any rain east of the mountains?”

“Dry as a bone,” answered one of the drummers.

The marshal wasn’t drinking his coffee, Sary noticed. Just sitting there, vacantly staring into space. She finished her breakfast, looked at the bill, and laid a half dollar on the cloth beside it.

The lawman came out of his chair before she did. A sudden coldness crept into her when she saw him cut around a near table, coming toward her.

He came up with an easy, half-smiling glance. He took the hat off his head and laid a hand on the table. She noticed the blunt square shape of his fingers. “You with them horses camped east of town?”

Sary made herself nod. “We’re taking them out to the ranch,” she said.

“And may I ask where that is, ma’am?”

“Why —” She stopped with her mouth open, belatedly realizing she didn’t know where it was, didn’t know even what name it was called by. “Grete Farraday’s ranch.”

He just stood there, not speaking. He said, “I see,” rather strangely, she thought, as though he didn’t see at all. “Grete Farraday,” he nodded, and appeared to be studying something over her head. “You know Grete pretty well?”

“I’m his partner.”

She didn’t like the still, unsmiling manner of his regard or the odd offbeat way those blunt fingers tapped the table. She said, “Is he in trouble?”

“Oh no — no,” he said — “no trouble that I know of. Whereabouts did you fetch this stock of horses from ma’am?”

“We brought them through from New Mexico.”

“Through Stein’s?”

Something about the way he was watching her suggested to Sary she might be on dangerous ground. She said frankly, “No. Grete brought us through some pass to the north of Stein’s.”

He seemed to be turning that over. “Well,” he said, “let’s ride out there,” and put on his hat, taking the hand off her table.

Sary rose, slipping into her jacket. There was something here that she wasn’t quite getting. She searched his face. “Is there a quarantine — something I might not know about?”

“No. Nothing like that. You’d have been stopped anyway if you had come through Stein’s. Brands’ll have to be looked at. Just a routine check,” he said, smiling.

She followed him out, not at all reassured. On the street she said, “I’ve got a horse at the livery…”

“I’ll go with you,” he said, and swung into the saddle.

• • •

Flat on his back with all the breath jarred out of him, Grete Farraday watched the man gather himself. For what seemed an eternity he lay in a kind of drugged stupor. It was the fright in the kid’s voice suddenly crying “Boss — boss!” that jerked Grete out of his paralysis. Desperately he twisted, digging his boots in, knowing he hadn’t any time to get his legs up.

Rip’s weight plummeted into him, smashing him back, but the blade instead of skewering him passed through the slack of his shirt, going into the ground like a picket pin, holding him so that he was not at once able to twist himself free. He pounded Rip’s head, battered his kidneys. The man got a forearm wedged across Grete’s throat.

Farraday forced a knee up, arching his back. Rip’s weight slid a little but he had one leg still flung across Grete, trying off-balance to get enough purchase to wrench his knife out of the ground. Grete sought that wrist, clamping down on it, at the same time succeeding in getting his other knee up. Rip’s weight slid some more.

Only the upper portion of him now held Grete down. Grete, half-strangled from the pressure of Rip’s arm, tried again to dislodge him and, failing, flung up both legs and got one wedged between them. Sweat-drenched, gasping, he pushed outward and downward, tearing Rip away from him, tipping the man over, breaking Rip’s grip on the knife.

Grete tore loose of it and rolled, coming onto his feet just as Rip scrambled up. They were both breathing raggedly. Rip, still running on rage, slammed into him, striking, snarling, striking again. Those were punishing blows and Grete, giving ground, felt every one of them.

He shook his head, trying to find the man. Something out of nowhere cracked him hard across the nose, numbing the whole inside of his face. Then he saw Rip and smashed him on both sides of the neck. The man swayed groggily. Grete drove a knee full into Rip’s belly.

The man’s chin came down like a blacksmith’s apron. As he stumbled forward Grete hit him twice more. The man reeled away with his mouth sprung wide, going wabble-kneed round in a kind of half-circle. He grabbed his face in both hands, collapsing into the dust.

The violence of the fight was still a wickedness in Grete’s stare. His head felt about to burst loose from his shoulders. Before he could speak, Barney Olds, coming around Frijoles, caught a glimpse of Ben Hollis queerly peering toward town. The kid, following that glance, discovered an approaching pair of horsebackers. He stared hard at these two. He said, “Company comin’.”

Something uneasy in the sound of it pulled Grete’s head around. He recognized both of them. Sary and Ed Stamper. Stamper was marshal of Willcox, a hard man to fool and an honest one. Grete wished now he had stopped in to see the man.

He walked over to the water bucket and sluiced his face. He cuffed some of the dust off his clothes, stuffed in his shirt, and poured the rest of the water over Rip.

The man groaned and spluttered. Grete nudged him with the toe of a boot. “Onto your feet —”

“What the hell did you hit me with?”

“Next time,” Grete said, “it’ll be an ax handle. Pick up that bucket and go fill it with water.” He sent a sharp look at Hollis, but Ben like the rest of them was eyeing the newcomers. Their hoof sound quit in a chorus of whinnyings. Grete swung around.

“So you’ve come back,” Stamper said. “With a crew and a partner.”

“You come all the way out here just to tell me that?”

“I had to see it to believe it.” The marshal’s stare washed over the rest of them, considering the girl, going back to Grete’s face. “I gave you credit for better judgment.”

A dark unruliness came into Grete’s look. The marshal still eyeing him, let the silence build up. Grete said coldly, “I know what I’m doing.”

Stamper nodded. “Do these others?”

“It’s not your concern.”

Ben’s head came around. Idaho’s eyes took on a deeper and darker searching. The Mexican, Frijoles, cocked his soft-shining eyes inquiringly at Ben. The kid looked nervous.

Sary’s voice bridged the uneasy quiet. “Mr. Farraday has my completest confidence. Whatever he believes we should do will be done.”

“Why, ma’am,” the marshal said, “I am sure of that.”

Grete smiled with his teeth but did not invite Stamper to get out of the saddle. The lawman, glancing around, said as though he were discussing the weather, “Whereabouts do these horses hail from?”

Farraday stiffly watched the man. “Aren’t you kind of stepping out of your bailiwick, Marshal?”

“Matter of opinion.”

They considered each other, Farraday’s eyes angrily brightening. “A marshal’s right to ask questions does not extend beyond the limits of the town that pays his wages.”

Stamper smiled. “Want to look at my credentials?”

Farraday, sensing a trap, shook his head. “I just don’t like to see a woman pushed around.”

“You know me better than that, Grete.”

Farraday, trying to keep one eye on the crew, said, “This stock came out of Texas —” and was at once aware without glancing at the girl that she had given a different answer. It was in the thin grin that crept about Stamper’s eyes, in the way he quietly sat there, left hand idly playing with the reins.

A pale rage sparkled in Grete’s stare.

Stamper said, “I’ll take a look at them,” and was turning his mount when something about Grete’s stance pulled his face around. “Don’t be a fool!” he cried sharply.

Farraday’s eyes were black as lamp soot. He had the look of a prodded tiger. He snatched up a halter shank off the ground and, stepping over to the horses Olds had fetched, wrassled it around the jaw of one. Ignoring the animal’s flattened ears he heaved himself up, curbing its action with the rope. He saw Rip slogging back with the bucket. Olds came up and handed him the pistol he hadn’t missed. Grete took a look at its barrel and shoved it into his holster and, bringing up his black stare, sent the horse after Stamper.

All this while Ben had kept his mouth shut. Now he said to Olds, “Put my rig on that black.”

Sary looked from him to Idaho, understanding with her woman’s intuition that each of these after his fashion coveted her. “Is this wise?”

The gunfighter’s raw-red cheeks stayed unreadable. Olds, still unmoving, had his eyes fixed on Sary. Anger whipped into Ben’s handsome face. “Did you hear me!” he yelled.

• • •

Farraday, coming up to the stock with the marshal, growled, “What are you up to?”

Stamper’s face swung about. “That’s one thing I don’t have to ask you.”

“Never mind! This stock is no concern of yours —”

“You better listen to me, Grete,” Stamper said to him. “The complexion of things around here is changing. I’m a deputy brand inspector now and there’s another at Stein’s as you would know if you’d come through there. I want to know why you didn’t.”

Grete said more reasonably, “I had word Curly Bill might be looking for us there.”

“Who tipped you off?”

“Matter of fact it was French.”

“French!” Stamper peered at him oddly.

Farraday grinned. “He sure as hell didn’t aim to. Somebody had fed Miz’ Hollis a yarn that folks over here was purely crying for good horse stock. Somewhere French had latched onto her, claiming he would find her a buyer for the lot. He showed up the day after I had made my deal and allowed he had buyers lined up at Stein’s.”

“So you pointed ‘em north. Where’d Bill’s bunch hit you?”

“Came down on us in that canyon east of Bowie. Ike Clanton, Hughes, and some more of that stripe.”

Stamper stared at the horses, slowly circling the band. “Flyin’ H,” he said, pulling up to look closer. “That stud’s got class. Better mannered than most.” And then he said, “Texas brand…. The girl said New Mexico. You got any ideas about that?”

“She came out of that country — that’s where I ran into her. Probably didn’t rightly catch your meaning.”

The marshal, without comment, reached into his saddlebags. He fetched out a brand book and thumbed through its pages. “Here we are — Flyin’ H. Tate Hollis. Brady, Texas — that the one?”

“Tate was her husband’s name.”

“Was? Is he dead?”

“That’s what I understand.”

“What’d he die of?”

“By God, Stamper! Why don’t you ask her!”

“I probably will,” Stamper said, putting the book back. “Now I’ll tell you something, Farraday. Swallowfork ain’t got one friend in this country and, as Crotton’s ramrod these past four years, I guess you know about how popular you are.” He held up a hand. “All right, that don’t bother you. It don’t bother me, either, but when you flimflam a woman into —”

“Stamper,” Grete snarled, jerking his chin up, “don’t say it!”

“I’ll say it. I want this out in the open. I don’t want you claimin’ after it’s too late you didn’t catch my meanin’.”

Watching Farraday, the marshal saw the unbridled leap of rage throwing its glare up into the desperate, affronted look of him, burning away the tie-ropes of his temper. All the wild and reckless pride of the man’s unbending nature was in the white flash of those suddenly bared teeth — all the aroused intolerance of an established way brought headlong up against the granite face of change. He was, Stamper thought, as adamant as Crotton. He had been raised in Crotton’s shadow, time and again bitterly shown that might made right; this doctrine had been nourished with every chapter of his experience. He had become too conversant with its grim rules to relish change; he meant to carve a place for himself by following Crotton’s footsteps.