The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 17
DURING the three weeks that Barrett had lain a forced recipient of Hal Nearing's hospitality, he had seen but little of the cattle baron, scarcely more of his wife. But such as he saw of them only set deeper an opinion formed on the night of Nearing's attempt upon his life: that Mrs. Nearing was fully cognizant of her husband's vassalage to Findlay, and of his wild desire to rid himself of the scoundrel's oppression. She knew that Nearing rode day by day like a man pursuing a phantom, hoping to lodge a shot that would set him free.
The marvel of it was that Findlay came and went at the ranch-house with such freedom and apparent unconcern. But Glass always attended the superintendent, Alma had said; very often three men rode with him. The man must have a pleasure in plaguing Nearing, or held the cattleman's desire to have his life in almost admirable contempt.
Nearing was not at home the morning following the formation of the working partnership between Alma and Barrett, when Barrett, confident of his complete recovery, took horse to return to his friends at the hay-ranch. Mrs. Nearing came to the porch to bid him adieu and wish him well, which she did with all the genial grace that gave her such a charm.
Barrett saw in her a woman much changed since his arrival at the ranch to go adventuring upon discoveries which began to show such dangerous development. Her hair was no whiter, for few unfrosted strands remained, but her face was lined deeper, her figure seemed thinner, a sadness had settled in her eyes. It would be merciful to her to put an end to the suspense that swung over her hour by hour. No revelation, no attendant disgrace that might come to Nearing, could rack and torture her more than this.
Dan and Fred Grubb welcomed Barrett back again with loud acclaim. Dan attempted to say something in the contrition of his soul for having failed his friend, only to be shut up by Barrett with the assurance that it was all perfectly understood, and nothing ever had been figured up against him to be discharged.
Dan was greatly relieved by this, for admission of fault goes hard with youth, great as the sense of duty may be that impels its utterance. He had many humorous experiences to relate of himself and Fred, their adventures in breaking the mowing machine and rake. That they had succeeded in the end was plain in the denuded appearance of the meadows, where many ricks of hay rose in imposing mounds.
The cabin had suffered no damage in the fire that destroyed the wagon, hay-rack and load of hay. Alma had appeared before the ruffians had backed the blazing load quite against the door, hitched a cow rope to the tongue and pulled the wagon a safe distance away. When Dan and Fred spoke of her work that day, they lowered their voices in the compelling immensity of their respect.
The hay was all cut, nearly all stacked. Barrett told his partners in the enterprise that he was to be counted out of it, but that he wanted to live with them if they would allow. To this renunciation of interest they would not hear. They returned lofty and contemptuous words in discount of it, and swore at him, threatening great bodily damage if he ever spoke of it again. As to living there, if he ever attempted to live anywhere else as long as there remained a shingle on the roof or a log in the walls, he'd have to stand up and make explanation of his infidelity. So the matter was put out of all minds, and closed.
Fred had entered one piece of land, which he found was all he could contrive. The others would have to go to Saunders in their own time and attend to this for themselves. Barrett pressed Dan to go at once, refusing to compromise on the remaining claim under fence. He would take up the piece immediately adjoining Dan's claim, and fence it in the spring, he said.
Fred Grubb praised this course. It was a wise thing for a man to make a home for himself while he was young, he said. Ten years would see that country all specked over with farm houses; the ones that got in first and had the pick of the land would be fixed for life.
"For as fur as your money in the Diamond Tail goes, Ed, you'd just as well stand on a hill somewheres and wave it a long farewell. It's gone. I thought maybe you might head off some of it at first, but since old Charley Thomson's got in the game no man's dollar'll ever come back home to set and hatch out dimes."
They were sitting with backs against the logs of the cabin wall, outside the door, facing the road, when Fred delivered this opinion in finance. In a row the three of them sat, legs stretched out before them, as if they had been stood against the wall earlier in the day and shot, and had collapsed in that position. They were taking no chance on surprise; each man had his gun on him, and Fred Grubb was further fortified by his shotgun, which lay along his leg.
Dan twisted his head in profound expression of assent to his partner's opinion of the Diamond Tail affairs. His hat was on the ground beside him, his fair hair, freshly barbered by the versatile poet, was combed down in a cow-lick over his left eye in the approved cowpuncher style.
"Them two fellers they're ridin? Hal Nearing like a witch horse," Fred declared, "break-neck for the jumpin' off place. Yes, and they'll come to it before long, the way it looks to a man up a tree."
"I believe you're right, Fred," Barrett agreed. "That lawyer and Findlay are hanging around the ranch like a couple of buzzards."
"Nearing's gambled the money off, my opinion, and they've got him in a hole," said Dan. "Wall Street; that's what hits these cattle barons between the eyes."
"Something's hit him between the eyes, he's got the blind staggers worse than any man I ever saw," Barrett said. "He's put on twenty years since you brought me out to the ranch, Dan."
"They're honin' him away, them two; there won't be nothing left of him but the handle in a month, and it'll be too short to pull him back out of the fire by," said Dan.
Fred Grubb sat smoking his thin cigarette, which he crooked to bind the paper, after the Mexican fashion, instead of licking it with his tongue. He seemed to be leading off by himself on some intricate branch of the matter, his brow gathered in deep meditation.
The other two said no more. Together the trio sat, their weapons beside them, as if waiting some event that fate plotted against them in the hovering dusk. Fred Grubb shifted his back against the logs presently, and still keeping his cast of meditation, rolled and crushed the fire out of the low-burned stub of his cigarette.
"Of course, a man's got to be sound, his gun arm's got to be studdy, before he goes out to check up his business with any two-leggid wolf that roams the range," he said.
It appeared to be an observation entirely irrelevant to anything under discussion, as indeed it was. Yet it bore acutely on the thing that ran through the minds of all of them: the vengeance that Barrett must go out to claim, as a man among men, from Dale Findlay very soon. Barrett was thinking of it, as he had thought of little else, since he came out of the delirium of fever. His pact with Alma Nearing, as he looked back on it that evening, was but an incidental subterfuge to put her aside and quiet her fears. Nothing could come of a scheme like that. Before they could stage their little interlude of jealousy, some new tragedy would develop to darken that melancholy house.
More than that, and first of all, he did not want Alma to talk with Dale Findlay; he didn't want her to go to a dance with him at Four Corners, or any corner of the earth at all, far or near. It was too much to pay for anything they might learn. He knew a shorter cut to the desired end. He had come to the hay-ranch that day for no other purpose than to lay his plans and follow them to a speedy conclusion.
Now Fred Grubb had put the key into the lock, opening the subject that brooded in his breast.
"It doesn't take a man long to harden," Barrett said.
"You don't want to show up too soon, old feller," Dan advised. "Let that shoulder of yours limber up, practice up on your shootin' a little. A man gets off mighty fast when he's laid up in bed a while."
"He sure does," said Fred.
"Take a week or two, and lay low," Dan counseled. "When you're ready we'll all go over to Bonita some night and clean 'em up. You can lay hands on him over at Cattle Kate's any Saturday night."
"When me and Dan goes anywhere we go together these times," said Fred. "We ain't a takin' no chances. After this we'll make it three."
"I sure appreciate it," Barrett said.
"If we happen to run into'm on the road, it'll be three to four," Dan figured, "not such long chances for us. They run in fours now, right along."
"It's generous of you boys to come into this scrap with me, but I've got no right to let you do it. It's my fight, boys; he was only after me."
"Your fight!" Dan discounted, cutting Barrett's share of it off to a very small corner, indeed. "Didn't they shoot nine holes through that door? Didn't they burn a load of this company's hay?"
"And a wagon, and a pair of double-trees, and a hay-rack we've got to pay for?" Fred came in with his bill.
"Didn't they try to burn this company's house, and didn't they shoot a member of this firm through the lights?" Dan demanded, glaring severely at the member in question.
"They sure did!" said Fred, a solemn and impressive chorus.
Barrett did not attempt to deny any of the particulars in this bill of indictment against Findlay and his followers. But he made no reply at once, only looked away into the dusky distances, as he had seen Alma Nearing gaze when things rose in her soul that words could not express. Then:
"We'll go to Bonita next Saturday night," he said.
They smoked in silence a little spell after that, the slow night creeping into the world around them. Dan got up after a little, beat his hat against his leg to knock the dust out of it, put it on exactly, to avoid disarranging his hair.
"The quicker the sooner," he said.
Fred started, leaped to his feet with a suddenness rather alarming.
"I clean forgot about goin' down to the ranch this evenin'," he said. "Manuel was goin' to fetch my things down from Eagle Rock camp, my wardrobe and my face powder, and curlin' irons and things."
"What did you do with that gunnysack full of poetry you used to have?" Dan inquired.
"That's what I want more than anything," Fred admitted. "If them works gits lost I'm in a hell of a fix! I've been savin' up them poems for twenty-seven years. Suppose that fat old Teresa took 'em to start her fire with!"
Without wasting any further time in words, the three of them saddled and set out on the rescue of the poems. Dan protested mildly when Fred mounted with the shotgun in his hand.
"Yes, I'm goin' to take it," said Fred, with admirable firmness for a poet, "and I'm a goin' to use it if we meet a pack of wolves. I'm a granger, I ain't no fightin' man; the rules don't bind me. Maybe a shotgun ain't regular, but it's purty dam' sure."
"Oh well, if it's wolves you're lookin' for," Dan yielded.
The moon came up, yellow as a candle flame, its benignant face suffused in the mists which hovered on the horizon edge. It was two or three days past the full, its under edge beginning to show a break in the circle. From the way Fred Grubb gazed at it as he rode, Barrett expected some tribute in verse to spill at any moment.
"That there moon makes me, think of an old flat grindin' stone I used to have to turn when I was a boy," said Fred. "Every time it come around to the flat place with my paw bearin' down on the scythe-blade, it made me hump my back and grunt."
This was so unexpected, and at such ridiculous distance from what he had primed his ear to hear, that Barrett laughed.
"What a break about the moon to come from a poet!" he said.
Fred laughed with him, seeing the incongruity of the simile, enjoying it fully, for he was one of the most practical of poets that ever lived. That little pleasantry, and the ramifications of banter and chaffing that grew out of it, cleared the brooding thought of vengeance out of Barrett's mind for a little while. The three rode as merrily as cavaliers bound for some gay rout, the moonlight whitening over the gray sageland, through which the road ran as straight as the surveyor's transit could draw it.
They were within two miles of the ranch when Dan announced that somebody was riding to meet them. Fred made immediate examination of his shotgun. Not satisfied with that alone, he exchanged the cartridges in the breech for others from his pocket. The levity and light words were hushed in a breath.
"Two of 'em," said Fred. "It ain't him."
"We'll wait for 'em here," said Dan, halting in a little dip in the land, from which the two approaching figures were not visible, and would not be again till they made the top of the little rise beyond. "I think one of 'em's him."
"Spread out," said Barrett. "Let them start it."
The two riders appeared at the top of the hill, not more than a hundred yards away.
"They don't see us, they must be ridin' in their sleep," said Dan.
"Must be," said Fred.
The poet took his post in the middle of the road, his gun held ready. The other two drew off to the roadside into the low sage and soap-weed clumps which grew sparsely there, a space of three or four yards between them. The riders were approaching leisurely, not in the suspicious, watchful manner of those who travel the road at night in guilty conscience, or bound upon deeds of violence and treachery. Now they discovered the three posted across the road ahead of them, and drew sudden rein.
"Let them start it," Barrett admonished again.
Barrett heard low voices exchange quick words; the click of bridle trappings when one of the horses shook its head impatiently.
"Don't shoot, Fred!"
Fred Grubb started, seemed to grow a foot taller as he stiffened with surprise. He leaned to look, his gun-barrel between his horse's ears.
"That you, Alma?" he hailed in suspicious voice.
"Yes. May we come on?"
"Pass by!" said Fred, drawing out of the road.
The two came on. Dan was right in his identification; the man was Findlay. He rode with his head up, passing the three at the roadside as if unaware of their presence, although Alma hailed them with friendly salutation, calling each by name.
"Fine night for a ride," she said, turning to call back to them.
"Yes, and fine company to be ridin' in!" said Fred, but in a low muttered voice of disapproval that could not reach her ears.
"Say!" said Dan, too greatly astonished for another word.
Barrett's sensation was far apart from surprise. It was more of a sinking of the heart such as weakens a man when he hears of a sore and heavy loss. He had not believed Alma would do this, readily as he had gone into the planning of it with her only a day before. It seemed to Barrett, sitting there on his horse stupidly gazing after her, that Alma was not alone riding away with Dale Findlay, but that she was riding away from him. What if she cared for the man, what if she had jumped at this pretext—absurd, foolish, he said, abusing himself for harboring the thought. Alma was doing only what she believed to be the best, but they had played with fire in a haystack, like the two foolish children they were, when they plotted that thing.
"Say!" said Dan Gustin again, "he's lookin' up in the world, ain't he? I never thought she'd be caught dead with that man."
"That little lady of mine!" Fred Grubb lamented. "Do you reckon they're workin' her into their sink-hole that's suckin' Hal Nearing down to hell and damnation?"
"No!" Barrett declared sharply. "She's only ridin' with him, just as any lady rides out with a groom."
"That's what they call a horse wrangler in high society. I've heard of them groomers," said Fred.
"Sure," Barrett returned, lighter in word than in heart.
The three of them had turned as if to follow the pair they had given passage through their line. They sat silently looking after them now as they rode on in the whitening moonlight.
"Well, he's ridin' safe, anyway," said Dan.
"But how about her?" Fred wanted to know. "Well, if she was my girl, or if I was a young feller that maybe's held her hand and kissed her a time or two, I wouldn't let her ride a mile in that man's company—not for all the gold of Gopher!"
"We'd better go on to the ranch," said Barrett, a little crossly. "She can take care of herself."
They rode on. The buildings of the ranch were in sight, the cedars by the roadside a dark line denying the trespass of the desert. Dan was the first to speak, breaking a long silence. He burst out suddenly, one hand on the high cantle of his Mexican saddle, to look back along the white road, upon which the two riders long since had disappeared.
"I'd give a purty if they went to Bonita and Cattle Kate saw 'em!" he said.
There was an eagerness in his voice as of a hope expressed with all the fervency of his heart.
"Shucks!" said Fred Grubb, covering whatever his sentiments were in that rather meaningless word.