Fiddlefoot (14 page)

A half-dozen men in blue field uniform and black campaign hats came into the corral now, and Frank walked toward them. Lieutenant Ehret saw him coming and smiled, and stepped toward him, holding out a soft, white hand. He was a paunchy man, with a fold of belly overlapping his belt, and he had a ragged roan mustache, worn full, that covered a loose-lipped mouth.

He seemed tired and harried, but pleasant enough, and Frank guessed the post construction was largely his chore. He said, “How are you, son? How's friend Rhino?”

Frank told him, but already Lieutenant Ehret was looking at the string across the lot. They were still in line, for Frank wanted to keep them from water until the inspection was over. Frank shook hands with the contract veterinary, an old and mussed and amiable man in a careless uniform who remembered him from the spring and introduced him to the two young officers with him, Lieutenants Hardy and Relitch. Two troopers carrying saddles crossed over to the string.

Lieutenant Hardy was lean and young and ramrod-straight, just out of the Academy, and there was a kind of cheerful impudence latent in his face. He regarded the string a moment, then said, “How many are you buying, Ehret?”

“Forty, I asked for.”

Hardy looked at Frank. “Not counting the buckboard team, you've got thirty-nine there.”

Frank pointed to his own horse, which was still at the trough.

“Still that's only forty.” Hardy grinned. “Don't you allow for rejections?”

“Not on this bunch,” Frank said.

Hardy laughed and shook his head, and now they moved over to the string. Cass and Johnny had unharnessed the lead team, and now Cass led the first horse out in front of them. Lieutenant Ehret, already bored, sought the shade of the stable wall and sat down, while the vet and the two lieutenants looked over the horse for faults of conformation. Then the vet examined mouth and feet, and, finished, signaled one of the troopers to saddle the horse. Lieutenant Hardy mounted now, and Frank supposed he was substituting for Lieutenant Ehret as inspecting line officer. Hardy tried the horse for gentleness, and then galloped him to the far end of the corral and back, and reined up before the vet. This was the test for wind. The vet listened, and said, “Sound. Bring on the next.”

Frank drifted over and squatted by Lieutenant Ehret in the shade, willing to let the horses show without help from him. Ehret observed pleasantly, “They're all the same brand, and they're a good bunch. Rhino ought to remember that brand.”

Johnny Samuels overheard him, and he looked over his shoulder at Frank. Frank shook his head imperceptibly and said, “He will,” with a faint irony that brought a glance but no comment from Ehret.

Only once was a horse questioned, and that was when Lieutenant Relitch suggested that a claybank gelding had a tendency to curby hocks. Lieutenant Hardy pounced on him, scoffing, and the vet backed up Lieutenant Hardy. Relitch rode the horse and was satisfied, and as the vet called for the next horse Relitch, glancing at Frank, said slyly, “Dammit, there must be something wrong with
one
of them.”

Frank only smiled. When the forty horses finished inspection, Lieutenant Ehret heaved himself to his feet, and Frank rose too. Lieutenant Hardy came over, halted beside them, reached in his shirt pocket, and brought out a long black cigar, which he tendered to Frank.

“I don't owe you this,” Hardy said, grinning, “but I made a bet with myself and lost.”

Ehret laughed and clapped Frank on the shoulder. “I know my dealers,” he said affably. “Come along for your money, son.”

Frank shook hands with the two officers, and fell in beside Lieutenant Ehret, who seemed in great good humor. As they walked past the stables toward one of the few finished buildings on the parade ground, he explained the post construction, and Frank listened idly. They were chased off the drive by a big construction wagon filled with adobe, and afterward they entered a low, one-story log building bearing the sign Adjutant over the doorway. They were immediately in a big room holding several desks, behind which blue-clad troopers were working.

Lieutenant Ehret turned right, and paused before one of the desks, saying, “Make out a check for five thousand dollars, sergeant. Make it payable to J. J. Hulst, H-u-l-s-t, and bring it in for my signature.”

Frank, from behind him, said mildy: “Better make that payable to me, Lieutenant Ehret. The name,” he added to the sergeant, “is Frank Chess, C-h-e-s-s.” He looked levelly at Ehret now. The startled look on Lieutenant Ehret's face was only momentary. He was about to speak, thought better of it, and said to the sergeant, “Hold on a minute, Grady.” He led the way to one of the offices opening onto the room, stepped aside to let Frank enter, and then closed the door behind him.

His voice was still cordial, though wary, as he said now, “I hate to ask this, Chess, but have you any authority from Rhino for this? Some paper?”

“They're my horses,” Frank said.

Ehret frowned, and let his hand fall from the doorknob. Frank, standing in the middle of the small office, watched the bafflement mount in Ehret's eyes.

“But these are Rhino's horses, aren't they?”

“No.”

“You work for Rhino, though, don't you?”

“No.”

“He sent you? Maybe he didn't have the horses at hand?”

“No.”

Ehret said with a sudden suspicion, “How did you know I had called for horses?”

“Rhino said so.”

Lieutenant Ehret looked searchingly at him and walked over to his desk, which was placed across the corner of the room, and sat down in the chair behind it. He said carefully, softly now, “What's going on here? I don't understand this.”

“You wanted forty horses. You've got them, and they've passed inspection.”

Ehret leaned back slowly in his chair. “I see,” he said slowly. “You just beat Rhino to the post, is that it?”

Frank nodded. Ehret shook his head and said with a mild irony, “I think I'll wait for Rhino, Chess, if you don't mind.”

“I do mind,” Frank murmured. He walked over to Ehret's desk, put both hands on it, and said quietly, “You remember me, Lieutenant. I was here last spring with Nunnally delivering mounts. We got in after you and the vet had rejected sixty Star-cross horses that Holborn over in Utah brought here. I was here with Nunnally when he bought the whole bunch from Holborn for forty dollars a head. I was here the next day, after Holborn left, when you bought that bunch and our bunch from Nunnally for a hundred and twenty-five dollars a head. Remember?”

Color crept into Lieutenant Ehret's face, and his eyes were ugly with dislike. Frank said now, “Those Starcross brands haven't been vented. Maybe the Major would like to see them out in the corral now.”

He straightened up and waited, while Lieutenant Ehret's baleful glance rested on him.

“You young pup,” Ehret said bitterly. “You wouldn't dare.”

Frank turned on his heel and started for the door.

“Wait!” Ehret said sharply.

Frank halted and turned.

Ehret said, “I'll take ten of them.”

“You'll take forty,” Frank said, and he started for the door again.

“Hold on!” Ehret called sharply.

Again Frank paused and turned. Ehret was chewing the fringe of his mustache, glaring at Frank. “I'm acting absolutely within my orders in dealing with Hulst,” he said flatly.

“Is it within your orders to reject sixty horses one day, and the next day, after they've changed ownership, accept them and pay a hundred and a quarter apiece for them?”

Ehret didn't answer.

“Let's ask the Major,” Frank gibed.

Ehret sighed heavily and came to his feet. He crossed the room in front of Frank, flung open the door, and tramped over to the sergeant's desk. “Make out the check to this gentleman, Grady. Here, I'll sign it.”

He signed his name to the blank check, and without a word or a look at Frank, he tramped past him back into his office and shut the door.

Frank pocketed the check and went out. In the bright sun, he stopped, folded the check and put it in his shirt pocket, feeling no elation, feeling nothing except a dismal resignation. He had used up all the rope, and he was at the end of it now. He was going back to take his medicine.

Chapter 14

The Masonic Hall was on the four-corners above Carrington's General Store, and tonight wagons, buckboards, saddle horses and buggies overflowed the hitch-racks on the main street, and filled the side street. Teams were unhooked and tied to endgates where they could feed on the hay in the wagonbeds, for this would be an all-night dance. The whole country, from the Battle Meadows to the Grand Peaks, and all up and down the river, would come with box suppers and the children. The town closed up, save for the saloons, and by dark the fiddle and accordion music was pouring out into the main street through the open windows of the hall, for this was the only break in the long summer's work before round-up.

Through the open window of her room, Tess could hear the music, and she hummed along with the fiddles now as she stopped before the mirror, giving her pale hair a final caress. She wished the mirror were bigger, but she had no misgivings about her appearance. This was a foolish dress, all white with a low, tight-fitting bodice and short sleeves with gay blue ribbon threaded through them, but she liked it and it made her feel good each time she wore it.

She blew the lamp then and went down into the lobby, which was crowded with men in dark suits and couples waiting impatiently for other couples.

Jonas McGarrity broke away from a couple of scrubbed-looking punchers and met her at the foot of the stairs, a wondrous smile on his usually morose face. He wore a stiff black suit, and his burnished boots shone with the same splendor as his black, smooth hair. By the flush of his face and the brightness of his eyes, Tess guessed he had made several trips to the Pleasant Hour. She was sure of it when he said with an unaccustomed gallantry, “I may not have a freighting outfit any more, Tess, but I've got the best-looking girl in town tonight.”

“The McGarritys are Irish and the Irish flatter you,” Tess said, laughing, but all the same she was pleased.

They crossed the street to the stairs leading up to the hall. A knot of shy punchers broke for them at the foot of the stairs. Tess dodged a half-dozen kids who were racing up and down the stairs in the last burst of the day's energy, and emerged into the big jam-packed hall. There was a quadrille being made up, and Tess had only the barest opportunity to look around the crowded room to wave to old Mrs. Bodine, and to hear Dick Afton, the O-Bar's foreman and the caller for tonight, announce the first set when Arch Ison, grinning his apologies to Jonas, swung her into the set that was formed.

The dance was breathless. The set was loaded with the men from the Horn Creek country, shirt-sleeved, weather-burned men who knew her from their own dances, and they whirled her and danced with the driving exuberance of friendly men who liked to tease. When the set ended, they gathered around her, and before Jonas could make his way to her the next dance started, and she was taken away again.

When this dance ended, Tess retreated into the women's coatroom and leaned against the wall to get her breath. The three women there smiled at her as they went out. Across the small room the table was loaded with the box suppers, and under the table in a big clothesbasket the Oberndorf twins were sleeping. Tess moved over and looked at them. She heard someone enter the room, and turned to look, her face still flushed with excitement of the dancing.

It was Carrie Tavister who had come in, and in one flickering second Tess saw the envy in her dark eyes, and she knew then, without pride, that Jonas had been right.

“I never see you, Tess,” Carrie said in a cordial voice. “How beautiful you look.”

Tess flushed, and she was exasperated with herself. She said, with a friendly smile, “You'd never think we lived in the same town, would you?”

Carrie nodded, and said with a quick grimace, “Sometimes I wish that big barn of a house would burn down, so I wouldn't have to take care of it. It's a prison and I never get out of it.”

She crossed over to the mirror on the wall. She was so short, Tess noticed, that she had to stand on tiptoe to see herself. Carrie pinched her cheeks to bring the color into them, and patted her shining black curls. She said then, with a sigh of self-derision, “If I saw this hair on a dog, I still wouldn't like it.”

Tess laughed, and Carrie smiled too. There was a doll-like quality about Carrie that Tess recognized and appraised now; her dark green dress, rich-looking and undoubtedly expensive, molded her slight, full figure with a delicate and delicious skill. Only a faint sharpness in her eyes and a hint of a pinched look around the corners of her barely uptilted nose mirrored the deep discontent that Tess guessed was imprisoned within her. Oddly, she wondered if Frank could read this and was ever troubled by its presence. As for herself, she had made her peace with Carrie some two years back, and it still held in the form of an amicable truce. There was too much iron in this self-willed girl for Tess's tolerant way, and she guessed there was too much of the casual and easy acceptance of life in herself to suit Carrie's taste.

Tess said, “I haven't seen Frank tonight.”

Carrie said dryly, “He's horse-trading somewhere,” and came over to Tess now. She reached out to adjust the bow on Tess's sleeve, and now she asked idly, “What's it like to work for Mr. Hulst, Tess?”

“They're nice to me there,” Tess said. “It's—oh, I guess it's better than teaching school. For me, anyway.”

“Do you like Rhino?”

Tess said in a neutral voice what was the literal truth, “He's always been very pleasant to me.”

“Does he make money? Is he a good businessman? I mean, that horse lot is so ramshackle and smelly there's no way of telling.”