The Baron of Diamond Tail/Chapter 9
CLOSE by the kitchen door where Alvino cooked and spread his salted foods, there stood a rude bench made of half a cedar log, the altar of ablution where the cowboys lined up and snorted like drowning horses over tin wash pans morning and night. As Barrett approached the cabin, a man rose from rinsing the dust of a long ride from his face and neck, calling loudly for a towel.
Alvino tossed the article demanded through the door, whence issued a stream of blue smoke from the burning grease of the midday bacon. This towel was half a grain sack, stiff with the accumulated dirt of weeks, the standing joke of the camp. The stranger turned it in his hands as if in the hope of finding a clear spot, cast it from him with a curse, drew a handkerchief half as big as a tablecloth from his pocket and began wiping his face. As he worked he leaned toward the kitchen door and poured a stream of Mexican upon Alvino, who could be seen dimly going about in his smoke.
At the sound of Barrett's coming the fellow turned from his abuse of the cook with a quick, wheeling start that crunched the gravel under his pivoted heel. The handkerchief he clutched in one hand, the other he dropped to his dangling pistol.
He was a tall, harshly built man of coarse, heavy, negroid features. There was a glow of ruddiness in his yellow-brown skin, such as marks the Mexican mestizo, or person of mixed breed. It is as if these mixtures fire in resentment always at the world's knowledge of their baseness, which nature stamps upon them in its uncompromising way. Barrett saw that the thumb of the man's left hand was gone.
He looked at the fellow curiously, feigning a surprise that he did not feel, to see a guest in camp display such nervous hostility. He nodded, with a short word of greeting, passing over the fellow's act as if he had not noted it, but careful to leave his gun hand free as he reached for a basin. The half-breed grinned, rolling back his thick, blue lips from great yellow, horse-like teeth. But there was no friendly approach in his greasy, congested small eyes, padded in the puffed flesh of excesses and debaucheries.
A diversion in the arrival of Dale Findlay and two cowboys relieved the strain of the situation for Barrett, who was at the last stand of desperation, in truth, to know what tack to take. Manuel's warning, taken with the stranger's nervous, hostile watchfulness, convinced him that—he was about to be called upon to pay for the rustler's death. What to do save watch and wait he did not know. He welcomed the arrival of the superintendent, little as he liked him, greatly as he resented the fellow's insolent behavior at their first meeting.
Findlay had not been at Eagle Rock camp since the morning he rode away with Nearing, a matter of ten days past. Now, as he dismounted before the cabin, his two companions having stopped at the corral, the stranger went to meet him, a certain respect in his bearing, a half-cringing gladness, as a dog goes to meet a harsh master. Greetings in that labial, mouthy speech to which the Castilian has degenerated among the Mexicans of the low caste, passed between them.
Barrett, not quitting his watchfulness, went on with his preparations to wash. His hand was on the water pail when Findlay turned to him, face black with displeasure, a curse on his thin lips.
"Put that horse away!" he ordered sharply.
Perhaps out of habit of long discipline Barrett did not hesitate, much as he resented the manner of the command. He sprang with the nimbleness of his years on deck to take Findlay's horse, his quick response, his very willingness, at once an apology for his apparent neglect of duty. Not that it was in fact a neglect of duty, for his service as wrangler did not include the unsaddling and turning out of any man's horse, let him be high or low. But Barrett did not want the enmity of this dark man to deepen against him for any act of his own.
The one-thumbed mestizo stood talking with Findlay a little while. The superintendent seemed to hear him with indifference as he turned up his sleeves and opened his collar to wash, dismissing him presently as he would a fawning dog. All this Barrett marked as he stripped the saddle from the hard-ridden horse. The mestizo withdrew a little way, where he stood smoking, something indomitable in his way of standing immobile, unruffled, villainously serene, as one appointed by fate waiting with certitude his hour.
Fred Grubb was not around the corral, nor at the spring among the willows at the canyon head, where he commonly went to wash in the little stream that contended impatiently with the stones it could not wear out of its bed. The old Mexican, Manuel, sat with his back against the lean-to, hat over his eyes, his bearded face in shadow, hands hooked in front of his updrawn knees. He seemed also one appointed by destiny for a place in the drama of life which he had not yet come to play.
Barrett looked further for Fred, wanting a word with him, for he had it in mind to linger there, busying himself about the corral, until Findlay, the two men with him and this sinister half-breed should go in for dinner, then taking horse for the ranch. Not finding Fred anywhere, Barrett put the best face over his inward uneasiness that he could assume, and went back to the cabin.
Manuel still sat in the sun, motionless as a man asleep, although Barrett could see the turning of his eyes as he passed. The others were at the table, making a fierce assault on bacon and beans.
Barrett washed, prolonging the operation while he beat about for a straight path out of the perplexities which surrounded him. He must ask Findlay, now that he had come, for permission to ride one of the horses down to the ranch, not being provided, as the cowboys were, even as Fred Grubb was, with a horse of his own. In case of refusal, he would try to borrow Fred's horse, if it could be done without prejudicing the poet's job.
That was one question. But it stood behind the other, the more serious one. If the one-thumbed mongrel came from the rustlers' camp to avenge the death of their fellow—and there was no motive for a movement against Barrett's life in any other quarter—how did it come that he rode so openly and unafraid into the cowmen's stronghold? It seemed to affirm the suspicion that had come up continually in Barrett's mind since his arrival at the cow camp: that Dale Findlay had an interest in running off the cattle, and that some shameful partnership stood between him and Nearing, in which Findlay held the upper hand.
All pointed back to this suspicion with redoubled force. Nearing had shunned contact with the thieves that fateful day. He had appeared troubled, displeased, with the tragic climax of Barrett's interference. Findlay's resentment had been all too plain in his reception of the greenhorn, whose weak pretense in coming there did not cover his true purpose from even the humblest wrangler on the range.
Findlay's arrival with his two handy men had been timed to make conjunction with the Mexican half-breed. It was planned and concluded that Barrett should not leave that camp alive, and Dalf Findlay was the directing hand behind the cowardly plot. Nearing, if bent to a kindlier desire, was powerless or afraid to interpose. Barrett knew this as well as if the heavens had opened and revealed it to him, each act in the plot spread before his eyes.
To ride away without permission would be only to invite a speedy and more shameful end. They would hang him then, having the pretense to justify them that he was making off with a horse. The best course was to get into it and out of it, if fortune might show him a knothole in a plank somewhere through which he might escape.
Alvino had spread the simple meal on one end of the long table, covered with oilcloth to which the dishes stuck to the spilling of much grease and semi-liquid foods, and profanity to season it all. The two cowboys sat across the table from the door, Findlay at the end, the mongrel Mexican alone, back to the entrance. Two plates were there beside him for the wranglers, the one farthest from him in the place where Barrett commonly sat. Barrett took his place, no greetings passing between him and any at the board.
Alvino always turned the plates bottom-side up to protect them from flies, that being his one nicety, and it is a poor man who cannot put forth one. As Barrett turned the dish over to receive bacon and beans, one of the cowpunchers across the table—he was a hound-faced fellow, with dark lopping hair about his ears—reached to the floor and picked up something, which he tossed directly into Barrett's plate. It was the towel which the half-breed had found too foul for even his greasy skin.
"There's a napkin for you, bud. They, tell me you fellers from the east just got to have 'em when you eat."
Barrett accepted the jest, quarrel-making as it was meant to be, in good part. He dropped the foul rag to the floor, wiped his plate on the sleeve of his shirt, and grinned.
"I can make out this meal without one, thank you," he said.
The Mexican at Barrett's right hand, his cheek puffed like a gopher's with the greasy food which he gorged as one famishing, turned his head with watchful, rolling eyes. He said nothing; he did not even grin when the two jokers across the table roared over this trick at the wrangler's expense. Only he turned his head that way, red eyes rolling, like a dog guarding against the incursion of one of his tribe while he gobbles up what he has found.
"I can make out, thank you, ma'am," the hound-faced man mocked, pitching his voice to imitate a woman or a child, or some weak and despicable thing far beneath the status of a man.
The pair of them laughed again at that, nudging each other with elbows as if to call attention to the confusion of the person whom they sought to humble and bring lower than his already small consequence in the world of cattle and the noble beings who rode at their tails, honestly or otherwise. But no smile broke the severe cast of Dale Findlay's face, no echo of the merriment, forced and derisive, issued from the thick lips of the mestizo, cramming fuel to feed the fires of his gros body.
Alvino was sitting near the stove, smoking his pipe after his invariable custom when he had cooked and spread out a meal. He was a man upward of sixty, thin and wiry, more Indian than Spanish blood in his veins. He always wore his hat, a black, broken-brimmed sombrero, under which he seemed to scowl with disfavor and contempt on those who came to lap up the greasy comestibles from his board. Now he sat there doubly displeased and sour because of the rating the half-breed had given him, impotent by reason of his wooden leg and years to exact satisfaction from the ruffian after the manner of his kind.
In a lull of the forced merriment, Alvino rose and Picked up the towel. As he straightened up with it in his hand, his wooden leg slipped on the greasy floor, making him clutch at the nearest support to save himself a fall. The nearest object chanced to be the mestizo, upon whose shoulder the old man's hand fell heavily.
The mestizo, purple in sudden rage, quickly turned this harmless touch into a deadly pretext for working his murderous purpose against Barrett.
"Keep your hands off of me!" he roared, slewing to face Barrett, befouling him with a discharge of abuse.
Before Barrett could even protest the unjustness of the charge, the half-breed leaped to his feet, upsetting his chair, his pistol jerked out in such reckless haste or blind fury that it struck the table edge, delaying for one fortuitous moment the shot that must have ended the wrangler's career.
Barrett had not counted on such a sudden outburst, watchful as he was, and strained to a hair's edge. He felt now that his movements were encumbered by some subtle, unseen force, as a man in a dream, when he laid hand to his own gun and drew it with what speed he might. But he must have fallen dead, with more than one bullet through him, if it had not been for the interference of Alvino as the half-breed swung his pistol clear of the table to fire.
What had been the old man's intention when he came across the room to pick up the towel, whether to provoke the great ruffian to some further insult upon his humble head and take the vengeance which the weak sometimes exact upon the strong, Barrett never knew. But now, as the half-breed's arm swung around to bring his gun to bear, Alvino struck him in the back with a butcher knife which he had up to that moment concealed about him.
The long blade, driven by the righteous fury of the old man's avenging arm, struck entirely through the half-breed's deep chest. As he stood there, his eyes grown great in terrible understanding of what had overtaken him, Barrett saw the point of the knife protruding. It must have cleaved his heart.
The shot that would have found lodgment in Barrett's body with a foot further swing of the weapon, broke the sugar bowl in the middle of the table as the half-breed's finger pressed the trigger when death ripped out his foul soul by the roots.
"Cuidado, keed!"
Alvino shouted his warning, at the same time motioning Barrett to the door.
Before Barrett could jump for it, the fallen ruffian's body barring his way, Findlay sprang up, cutting off his retreat, slinging out his gun as he leaped. Barrett stood for a moment, frantic as some wild thing cornered beyond escape.
There was a window behind the two men facing him across the table. But they were on their feet, guns out, looking to Findlay as if to ask him whose lead it was going to be in the last hand of this unequal game.
"All set! Drop them guns!"
Fred Grubb was issuing commands from the door, where he stood with a double-barreled shotgun thrown down to cover generally Findlay and the two on a line with him on the other side of the table.
Much as he had been despised, little as his courage had been counted, if ever reckoned at all; low as his position, abused as he had been with impunity all the years of his service as wrangler, there was something in Grubb's voice and manner that would not admit parley or delay. Findlay was first to grasp the amazing truth. He dropped his gun within the margin of that second that would have counted his last if he had demurred. The others, gaping in amazement, cowed and wilted in front of that weapon with which a blind man could scatter death, opened their nerveless fingers and let their pistols fall.
"Come on out, kid!" Grubb called.
Barrett lost no time backing from the room, Findlay drawing aside out of the door before the added menace of his gun, to let him pass.
"Prance out of there, you fellers, all of you!" was Grubb's next command.
They came, Findlay first, the two cowpunchers with hands held high to show the entire honesty of their present intentions, even though it did not vouch for the future.
"Boss man, I hate to have to take a gun to you," said Grubb, "but I ain't the man to stand by and see my pardner done up in cold blood. Don't tell ma I'm fired, for I ain't; I resigned when I loaded up this gun with buckshot a minute ago. Waltz over there te that krel, and line up agin the fence!"
As the three marched at Grubb's orders, the poet, who had so unexpectedly developed the qualities of a first-class fighting man, whispered to Barrett:
"Our horses're back of the house—all set—I turned every head but them out on the range. Bolt for 'em kid! I'm with you."