Fiddlefoot (10 page)

“No,” Frank said dryly, “you just won't try to be one.”

Tess laughed. “Maybe that's it.”

They smiled at each other in strange communion and afterward Tess remembered this.

The river road came into the main road now, and Frank swung the buckboard back toward town. They were both silent now, and Tess felt a pleasant contentment. She had needed that spare and offhand reassurance that he had given her, and later when she was alone, she could ponder his reference to Rhino.

In the middle of the business block, Tess said, “Let me down at the
Tribune
, Frank.”

Frank pulled up the team in front of the newspaper office and glanced at its dark interior. “You're too late, Tess.”

“I have a key,” Tess said.

At Frank's look of bewilderment she laughed. “I keep Mr. Maas's books for him. That's the way I get money to play poker with.”

Frank looked at her a long moment, now soberly, and then he shook his head. “You're bad for me, Tess,” he said, and afterward he smiled faintly to reassure her.

As she inserted the key in the door, she glanced up at the street, and saw Frank in front of the hotel tying his horse to the endgate of the buckboard. In the low sun, whose light lay cleanly on the quiet street, he seemed tall and spare and quick with a sure swiftness in his every movement. Remembering his parting words now, she was oddly disturbed.

Chapter 9

The long and unaccustomed day in the saddle yesterday, rounding up Frank's horses, had given Cass a restless night, so that he was thankful when his usual hour of arising came around, an hour before daylight. He pulled on his trousers, picked up his boots, went over to the cook's bunk and shook him, then passed softly on sock feet down the aisle between the rows of sleeping men. Outside, he put on his boots and took a look at the night, smelling the sweet chill of the coming morning.

Pouring a basin full of water, he bent over and washed. His big rough hands, gnarled and calloused, served as the goad to really awaken him as they passed over his seamed face. He scrubbed at his mustache until it was soft and silky, washed his bald head, dried himself, and then automatically reached for his pipe.

Loading it by feel with a shaggy black tobacco, he only then noticed the lamp lighted in the main house. It had been so long since he had seen a light in that end of the big place that he puzzled for a moment before remembering Frank. Was the youngster just going to bed or just getting up?

Cass lighted his pipe and watched a minute, savoring the raw raking shock of the tobacco in his lungs. During this time he saw Frank pass back and forth between the lamp and the window several times. Cass strolled over to the yard fence and watched, but even this close Frank's movements made no sense.

Cass considered now. Four days ago, his antagonism to this young cub wouldn't have brought him as far as the fence. Now, however, he had made his offer of help and it had been accepted. He shoved open the gate and walked over to the outside of Frank's room and halted just outside the sill, silently regarding the lamplit scene before him.

Frank had a great coil of inch-and-a-half rope on the floor. Every eight feet of its length he was seizing to it with wet rawhide a three-inch iron ring. Finished with one ring, he coiled up the completed section and measured out another eight feet. He was working so intently that Cass watched two full minutes before he spoke.

“Ain't seen that rig used since the war,” Cass observed.

Startled, Frank wheeled, and when he saw who it was a grin came to his face. “Want to splice the ring in the end, Cass?”

Cass came in. He picked up the lone ring bigger than the others and began to unravel the rope, observing, “Didn't know you youngsters knew about this.” They worked in silence many minutes, during which Cass covertly regarded Frank. There was a certain grim temper in his normally cheerful face, and Cass wondered what had gone on with Hannan yesterday. Cass said presently, “How big a string you goin' to drive, Frank?”

“How many horses did you and Johnny round up?”

“Thirty-nine.”

“Then I'll get forty out of your bunch and mine, with the culls out.”

“Where you drivin' 'em to?” Cass went on.

“Fort Crawford.”

Cass eyed him curiously. “You been there?”

“This summer.”

“Then why don't you loose-herd 'em? It's wide open country, only a hundred and twenty miles.”

Frank was sitting cross-legged on the floor. Now he let his hand fall to his lap and regarded Cass levelly. “I may be traveling at night. Then, there's a cranky purchasing quartermaster at Crawford, and I want my teams in good shape.” He hesitated, Cass thought, before he said, “Another reason, too. This might wind up with a race.”

“With who?”

“Rhino,” Frank said grimly. He went to work again, and asked then, without looking up, “Want to take the wheelers, Cass?” He looked up with a wicked mischief in his eyes.

“Do you need me?”

“You, Johnny, Red, and Shields.”

Cass thought a moment. “You settle it with Jess.”

It was barely full light when they finished and lugged the gear down to the blacksmith shop on the other side of the big log barn.

The McGarritys' rickety buckboard stood in front of the shop's open door where Frank had left it last night. Briefly, Frank explained to Cass what he wanted done: hoops and double cover which he had bought in town last night after leaving Tess were to be put on the buckboard; a handbrake was to be rigged up; the free end of the rope was to be spliced into the buckboard's tongue; the buckboard was to be loaded with sacked oats, bed-rolls, and grub for three days. The triangle clanged for breakfast as he finished.

He stopped in at the cook shack and asked that Cass's breakfast be saved out, and it was the measure of Cass's influence here that the cook accepted the request without protest. Afterward, at the washbench, he doused cold water on his head. The shock of it wakened him, so that his sleepless night was forgotten, and he went in for breakfast.

This was his first appearance at Saber since the fight, and he spoke only to those who spoke to him. Cass had not spoken for the crew when he proffered help, and remembering this, Frank kept silent and aloof, but something was afoot and the crew knew it, for Cass's urgent hammering was threaded all through the meal, and Frank surprised an occasional speculative look in his direction. Breakfast finished, he tramped up to the office where Jess Irby held morning court and parceled out the work to the crew.

Jess, seated in his swivel chair, listened carefully while Frank made his request. Frank summed it up by saying, “This is a loan from you to me, Jess. If they come they're on my payroll, and ask them, don't order them—if you can spare them.”

Jess nodded gravely. “They'll go and I can spare them.”

Frank went out then past the dozen men idling at the office door with their first morning smoke. In the corral he caught and saddled his sorrel and rode out into the horse pasture. With the volunteer help of Ray Shields, the horse-wrangler, he spent a pleasant half-hour rounding up his fifty-odd horses and driving them into the big corral. When the sun topped the eastern peaks, its first touch was warm and pleasant, and he enjoyed the prospect of this job. At the big corral, he found a curious trio of the crew had halted to watch what was going on.

By the time he and Ray had cut out all the horses who were not solid-colored or who were over nine years old, and had turned them back into the pasture, there were a half-dozen of the crew lined atop the corral. Among them, Frank noticed, was Jess Irby, and Frank knew in their silent way they were measuring him, this time for his knowledge of the business he had told them would be his.

Johnny Samuels and Red Thornton climbed down from the rail saying they were willing to work for him, and Frank told them what he wanted.

Afterward, he took up his position in the small corral by the pasture gate, and as the horse-wrangler led the first horse out of the big corral past him, Frank was aware that Jess had moved over on the corral fence behind him. So, he noticed, had the others. This horse was a chestnut gelding whose coat glistened like burnished gold in the sun. Frank looked briefly at him and said, “Turn him out.”

Red Thornton promptly objected. “Frank, I been usin' that horse and he's sound.”

“He's fifteen-three high. The Army says fifteen-two, Red.” They knew now what he was doing, and while there were some good-natured murmurs of doubt nobody openly questioned him, and the chestnut was turned out. The next four horses were acceptable, and were turned into the holding corral adjoining. By now, a dozen of the crew were watching silently, and Frank knew they would be quietly and mercilessly critical. They knew horses; he would have to prove that he did.

Red Thornton led the fifth horse past him now. He was a close-coupled bay, compact as a cob of corn, with the flat shoulders and rounded breadbasket the Army coveted. Frank glanced once at him as he was walked by and said, “Turn him out, Red.”

Jess Irby, from behind him, chuckled. “I'll fight you on him, Frank.”

Frank shook his head. “Sweenied shoulder, Jess.” He walked up to the horse and pointed to a faint flat depression in the smoothly bunched muscles of the right shoulder which indicated an atrophied muscle. “That'll get by the Army vet, but not a line officer.”

Jess rubbed his chin and said nothing. The men grinned at him, and Jess smiled faintly, too shrewd to argue.

The crew was uncritical as he turned down the fifteenth horse for calf knees, which they could all see, and only Ray Shields protested stubbornly at the rejection of the twenty-fourth horse for being herring-gutted. “I'll buy that damn horse, I like his chest,” Ray said, as he turned him out. The crew hooted good-naturedly.

The fortieth and last horse was a sorrel, bearing, as did all the others, the hilted Saber brand which was Frank's own, instead of the hiltless Saber which was the ranch brand. The sorrel was bright-eyed, alert, fat and sleek as a woodchuck from his mountain summer. The crew looked at him and there was a murmur of approval.

Frank, this time, watched the horse pass him and made no comment. He made a circle with his finger, and Johnny Samuels, who was herding him, turned him and led him back. “No, sir,” Frank said then. “No quartermaster would pay for him.”

A wave of protest came from the crew, and a sudden grin came to Frank's face. He shook his head and said, “Get down and look at him.”

A half-dozen punchers climbed off the corral and formed a loose circle around the sorrel. They regarded the horse in silence, and Johnny Samuels asked doubtfully, then, “Fifteen hands three?”

“Fifteen-two,” Frank said.

They studied him some more in silence and Jess Irby remarked dryly, “He's handin' you taffy, Johnny. He'll take him.”

They all looked at Frank, and Frank shook his head. “Capped hip.” He touched the sorrel's left hipbone, which bore a faint depression in its curve. Sometime long ago, a fall had clipped the point of the hipbone, which was enough to disqualify him for a cavalry mount.

Johnny Samuels still looked doubtful; he walked behind the sorrel, bent his knees a little and sighted over his back. A baffled expression was in his face as he straightened and shook his head. “He's hip down, all right.” He glanced over at Frank, and his grin now was friendly. “Don't you ever sell me a horse, Frank.”

The crew laughed at that, and Frank joined them. He knew now the truce was over, and that he was accepted. This, and the fight, was the price of readmission to Saber.

Frank chose from the leftovers now the wheel team, and he and Johnny harnessed them and led them over to the buckboard and hooked them up. A saddle was thrown on the near horse of this team. The long rope, with its iron rings, was stretched out ahead of the buckboard's tongue. Two by two, the chosen horses were led out by their new six-foot rope halters and haltered, a pair to each ring, a horse on either side of the big rope. When the tenth pair, with the near horse also saddled, was brought out, it was put in harness, and a chain joined the inside hame of each; and the big rope laid over it to keep it from dragging the ground. Ten more pair of horses were haltered ahead of this team, and then the lead team was harnessed to the ring in the end of the rope.

Cass, when he finally stepped into the saddle of the near horse of the wheel team, could look over the backs of twenty-one teams stretched out a hundred and seventy feet ahead of him. The buckboard behind him, with its new snowy cover over the hoops, looked almost diminutive. Red Thornton climbed into the saddle of the near horse of the swing team. Johnny Samuels, on the near horse of the lead team, kept looking back impatiently now, talking with Ray Shields who was mounted on a free horse and who would be outrider.

When Frank had finished harnessing the team he had borrowed from the McGarritys, he looped up their tugs and tied them to the endgate of the buckboard.

Mounting his own horse now, he glanced down at the handful of the Saber crew which had been helping. Jess Irby's expression was one of skepticism; he shook his head and saw Frank watching him. “That's five thousand dollars on one rope, Frank; take care of it.”

It was an hour short of noon when Frank rode past Johnny and said briefly, “Get 'em movin'.”

By the time the long string was out of the meadows headed toward Rifle, both Johnny and Red had learned to keep the tugs tight, and Frank relaxed a little. His gamble might succeed, althought the success of it hinged on his beating Rhino's bunch to Crawford; and they were some seventeen hours ahead of him. The advantage, however, lay with him, for Rhino's crew did not know they were in a race, and they would loiter, grazing their horses at every opportunity.

Two miles short of the grade into Rifle at the turnoff to O-Bar, Frank reined up and waited for the string. Once they caught up with him, he untied the McGarritys' team, and gave directions for skirting town so as not to arouse Rhino's curiosity. They were to pick up the river road below town, through O-Bar's range, and keep traveling until an hour after dark.