Fiddlefoot (2 page)

Frank settled slowly back in his chair again, looking deliberately about this dismal hot cubbyhole of an office. A faint distaste was reflected in his face as he drew a sack of tobacco dust from his shirt pocket and carefully rolled a cigarette, concentrating on it. He finished it, touched a match to it, and looking over its flame he saw Rhino eyeing him with a bland and bored patience.

Wake him up
, he thought and flipped the match to the floor and said, “I'm quitting, Rhino.”

Rhino nodded once, unperturbed.

“You'll have to get someone else in your bunch to wear that soldier suit—somebody that won't get hog-drunk in public. You got anybody like that, Rhino?”

The big man was silent a moment, curiosity in his pale eyes now. “You're mad, Frank,” he said then.

Frank said nothing.

“Mad at being left almost rich?” Rhino asked gently. “Or mad at losing a stepfather you hated and that hated you?” Rhino's eyes narrowed shrewdly. “It couldn't be remorse, could it, Frank? You didn't treat him well.”

“No,” Frank said quietly. “I'm glad he's dead.”

“You should be,” Rhino murmured, in lazy contempt. “You still won't have to work, now you've got Saber. That's a big ranch. It'll take you a long time to go through all that money.”

“Now who's mad?” Frank asked dryly.

Rhino shook his head. “No, you're wrong, Frank. I don't begrudge you Saber. I don't begrudge you anything. You know why?”

“Tell me,” Frank said mockingly.

Rhino smiled meagerly. “You'll lose it. You aren't man enough to hold it. You won't ever marry Carrie Tavister and settle down. You'll get fiddlefooted again, and you'll want to drift. Saber will go through your fingers like so much sand, and you'll be off to Oregon or Mexico. But you'll be back.”

“And beg you for the soldier suit?” Frank asked dryly.

The flush on Rhino's face deepened imperceptibly. “You'll want it, but you won't get it.”

Frank shook his head. “No, I'll never want to wear it again, Rhino. I never liked to wear it.”

“Naturally,” Rhino said with open malice. “It took some nerve. I'm surprised you ever wore it.”

“So am I,” Frank said calmly.

Rhino's eyebrows lifted. “You admit it?”

Frank nodded. “Yes. Every time I'd go into a town and announce I was an officer buying horses for the cavalry, I expected someone to ask me for my credentials. Every time I rejected a good horse worth a hundred and twenty-five dollars, I expected a rancher to make me prove the phony reasons I gave him. And every time Hugh Nunnally stepped out of the crowd and offered the seller forty dollars for the horse, I expected to be mobbed. I'll never know why those ranchers never connected me with Hugh—or both of us with you.”

“You're quite a hero,” Rhino said.

“Yes,” Frank said quietly. They looked at each other levelly, and a slow puzzlement came into Rhino's face.

“What did you come here for?” he asked.

“To tell you that. I'm a poor crook, Rhino. I don't like it. I'm quitting.” He leaned forward, and repeated, “I'm quitting.”

“I heard you,” Rhino said. He regarded Frank a long time and then observed dryly, “You think it's that easy?”

Frank carefully dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out. He said, almost idly, “When Ed Hanley heard Rob was dead, he said he needed money.”

Rhino turned this over in his mind, and smiled.

“I hit him. He changed his mind.”

Rhino still smiled, and Frank stood up.

“Walk soft, Rhino,” he murmured, and when Rhino didn't answer, he went out.

The office was dark and empty as he went through it; he got his horse and rode out the gate, turning toward town. It puzzled him obscurely that Rhino's words had the power to rankle. He had expected no less because this was Rhino's fair opinion of him, which, in turn, was the town's opinion also.
And with the bark on, it's Carrie's, too
, he reflected. You couldn't drift over a dozen states for five years to come home and expect people to do more than laugh at your stories while they bitterly envied you. Nor should you have one of the biggest ranches in the country given you as a reward for that idleness. He shifted in the saddle, pondering this now, as he had pondered it these last four days coming from Utah. There was Carrie to see tonight, and he shrank from that, for the reward he had received for his irresponsibility was also a reward for five years of neglect of her. There was a name for him, he understood now, and Rhino had named him. He was a fiddlefoot.

Ahead of him now, he saw a figure vaguely outlined against the town's light walking in the road, and presently, overtaking it, he saw it was Tess Falette. She was bareheaded, carrying her hat, and she was humming a soft tune in the night.

He drew alongside her and, touching his hat, said, “You too old to ride double, Tess?”

Her laugh was warm, and she said, “Not too old, Frank, but I'd rather walk. I sit down too much.”

The distaste for the hour ahead of him prompted Frank now to step out of the saddle and fall in beside this girl, leading his horse.

They were silent for a minute, both a little surprised and pleased at his action, and the silence began to dim the sharpness of Rhino's words.

Tess said pleasantly now, “What's that country like where you were?”

“A big white dry bone, some of it.”

He heard her sigh. “I started out to see it once when I was twelve. My dad brought me back, because little girls didn't run away, he said.” Her warm laugh came again, and he found himself carefully recalling what he knew of this girl. In the three months he had worked for Rhino, he had come in from buying trips only rarely and at hours that sometimes made him miss her entirely. He recalled someone saying she was a daughter of one of Rhino's former teamsters who had died, and that Rhino had given over to her the running of his trifling freighting business.

Now she said, “How far did you go?”

“Almost into Idaho.”

“Did you men stick together or did you split up?” Tess asked. Frank looked down at her in the dark, a caution touching him now. Most certainly, this girl was not in on any of Rhino's dozen secretive schemes, and he was wary of her curiosity.

“We split up. That's a big country.”

“Were you alone any of the time?”

Frank halted in the road now, and she halted too, facing him. “I know I'm snooping, Frank,” she said quietly, forestalling him. “I'll tell you in a minute. Will you answer me?”

“No, I wasn't alone,” Frank lied.

“And you can prove it?”

“By Hugh Nunnally. But why should I prove it?”

Tess turned now, saying, “So Rhino didn't tell you?”

Frank said nothing, and fell in beside her, and presently Tess said, “Buck Hannan's been in the office three times this week since they found your stepfather.”

“He's sheriff. Why not?”

“He keeps asking if you've come in yet.”

Frank put out a hand now, and Tess halted, and Frank said in a low voice, “What are you trying to tell me, Tess?”

“Your stepfather had been dead two or three weeks before he was found.”

“So Rhino said.”

“You've been gone how long—two months?”

“A month and a half this time.”

“You and your stepfather had had a quarrel, and that news is all over town, Frank.”

“We had a lot of quarrels,” Frank said grimly. “A thousand, maybe.”

“Yes, but you own Saber, now he's dead. That might mean something to Hannan.”

Frank was utterly still a moment. “That means Hannan thinks Rob was murdered.”

“And that you might have done it.”

Frank let his hand drop from Tess's arm, and they began walking again. It was odd that Rhino hadn't told him this. As for Rob being murdered, the fact was of complete indifference to him, and of little curiosity. It had been years since he had felt anything about Rob Custis save a quiet and controlled hatred. So many people felt the same way that he had always accepted it as inevitable that Rob would die a violent death.

They were on the outskirts of town now and a couple of Slash H riders overtook them and spoke quietly to Frank. Where the first tie-rail of the business section and its boardwalk began, Frank halted. A few of the stores were still open, their lamps casting a faint glow over the quiet main street. By their light, Frank regarded the girl beside him, and he surprised her watching him with an expression of gravity that was mingled with curiosity.

“Where do you live, Tess?”

“I have a room at the hotel.”

He spoke slowly now. “Thanks for telling me this. But why did you?”

The faintest of smiles curled a corner of her wide, full mouth. “Maybe because you've never asked me to take a buggy ride in the moonlight.” She shrugged. “Maybe I like a man who laughs once in a while. Maybe I don't think it's a crime to be fiddle-footed. I don't know, Frank. Good night.”

He touched his hat and watched her move off down the boardwalk, still carrying her hat in her hand, a straight girl with a proud walk. A faint curiosity stirred within him as he watched her, and for a moment his face lost its unaccustomed soberness, and then he turned and stepped into the saddle.

Chapter 2

Tavister's house was a high, two-story affair set on a corner behind a deep lawn, and from the porch chair where Carrie sat in the darkness now, the sounds of the main street two blocks away were distant and muffled. She heard her father prowling about his study upstairs; a buggy passed on the street, the hoof-beats of the horse muffled in the thick summer dust, and after that it was quiet.

Too quiet, Carrie thought dismally. After five years of waiting, she should have learned to curb her impatience, but she never had. The mere knowledge that word had been sent to Frank had brought her out here for the last three nights. If her pride allowed it, she knew she would have been waiting at the stepping block—as close to him, she thought wryly, as she could get.

The pots of geraniums strung along the front steps had ceased gurgling and bubbling from the water she had already given them, and now she leaned down for the watering can beside her to give them more. This was a ritual in the summer, so old its origin was lost in childhood. Three times a week, all the pots of flowers in the house were brought out, lined along the steps, and thoroughly drenched.

She was bent over, fumbling for the can in the darkness of the porch, when she heard the hoofbeats. Rising quickly, she saw the dim shape of a rider come even with the walk, pass the stepping block, and dismount.

A feeling of excitement almost choked her, but she remained where she was. At last, by the dim lamplight of the hall shining through the front door, she saw him, tramping up the walk, and she thought,
You've waited. Don't spoil it now
. She came slowly to the steps and said in a voice almost shaking, “Be careful of those steps, Frank. I've got all the geraniums on them.”

She saw Frank halt and peer down, and then she heard him swear mildly as he tumbled one over in his haste to reach her.

She was in his arms then, and she kissed him lingeringly. For three seconds, she forgot herself, forgot her resolves and her promises to herself, and gave herself to him.

She felt her arm being pulled gently then as he moved her over to the doorway and into the light. She stood there while he leaned against the jamb and looked at her hungrily. Because she was excited and pleased, her small, grave face, her wide green eyes were stirred with pleasure and with love. Her hair, black as a cricket and as shiny, was pinned in careless curls atop her head, and the dress she wore, of some stiff pale yellow stuff, demurely hid the rounded softness of her small body.

Frank only watched her, his face blurred in the half-light, and finally Carrie laughed. “Say something, you fool,” she murmured. “All I've heard you say are swear-words.”

Frank drew her to him again and kissed her, and then he said, “All right. I'm hungry.”

Carrie laughed again, hugged him impulsively, and then went through the doorway into the hall. She hummed a small tune now as she went ahead of him into the big kitchen where the lamp was turned low. She was a fool for being so happy, she knew, but right now it didn't matter. She was grateful enough to live only in the present, right now.

Standing on tiptoe, she turned up the lamp, and then she turned to look at him over her shoulder. He needed a shave, and his short curly hair was tousled, but that could no more blur the edge of him than a stain could blunt the steel of a knife, she thought with a sudden envy. He walked past the counter and in passing reached out and lifted the lid of the cooky crock in the prowling, artless way of a hungry animal, his movements quick and restless. When he caught her watching him his grin came swiftly, touching her heart with fullness, as when she saw a child smile. His friendly, impudent handsomeness would melt stone, she thought, and now he came prowling around the table, and, out of cheerful deviltry, put his arms around her and lifted her off the floor, kissing her neck at the hairline.

“Now put me down,” she scolded him. She was aware only then that perhaps there was a sharpness in her voice, and a faint depression touched her and saddened her. It was always this way, when their greeting was over, and the world was as it was instead of made charmed and wonderful by this man she would marry.

She began laying food on the table and Frank dragged one of the chairs out and sat down. He ran his fingers through his short, tousled hair and yawned, and Carrie said, “Bad trip?”

“It was all right going out.” He broke off a piece of bread, took a bite of it, and said around it, “How's the Judge?”

“Fine,” Carrie said. Her back was to him and now she turned and said over her shoulder, “Before I forget it, he'll want to see you, Frank.” He looked up and she said soberly, “About Saber. You own it now.”