Gather My Horses (20 page)

Adler's voice came from the edge of the shaded sidewalk. “Afternoon, Fielding.”

“Good afternoon. If you've got a moment, there's something I'd like to mention.”

“Go ahead.” Adler took out his silver watch and began to wind it. When he looked up, Fielding spoke.

“Well, not to beat around the bush, I need to say that I don't care for your men harassing me.”

Adler paused in his winding and fixed a stare on Fielding. “I understand that the kid went for his gun first. You even told the deputy that, if I'm not mistaken.”

“He did, but it wouldn't have happened at all if Mahoney and Pence hadn't shown up at my camp to begin with.”

Adler waved his eyebrows. “They were on open range as much as you were.”

“A man's camp is his camp. But that's not the only incident anyway.”

“What other was there?” The man's voice had a dead-level tone to it.

Fielding thought Adler was waiting to counter him about the shoot-out when the roan horse got killed, but he skipped to the more recent flare-up. “In addition to the time I got jumped and couldn't see for sure who it was, I had another run-in. Someone was lurkin' in the rocks when I was comin' back from Cogman's Hole earlier in the day, and when I surprised him, your man Pence came along to get him off the hook.”

“What do you mean, lurking?” Adler put the watch away and pulled his right glove onto his hand.

“He was lyin' in wait for me, right off the side of that narrow trail. So one time I'm off in the west, and the other time I'm over east, and wherever I go, I run into your men watchin' my trail.”

Adler gave a slight turn so that his gun and holster came into view. His voice was steady as he spoke. “They say you're a good hand, Fielding, and you do your work. Even if you're thick with people like the junk collector. But watch what you say. If my men are out on the range in one place or another, they're lookin' after Argyle cattle.”

Cedric was folding up his letter.

Adler went on. “Tell me, then. Who was it you caught lurking, as you put it?”

“A new hand of yours, name of Ray Foote.”

Adler laughed. “A hand named Foote. A galoot who's still learning not to fall off a horse. Do you think you have anything to fear from him?”

“To tell you the truth, sir—no, I don't. But he gets his orders from somewhere.”

“He didn't get that one from me.” Adler paused. “Anything else?”

“Not at the moment.” Fielding led the buckskin away, mounted up, and lined out his string. As he looked back, he caught a glance of the two men on the sidewalk. Cedric seemed to be watching the white horse on the end, while Adler seemed to be taking them all in, one by one.

Fielding sat on a heap of folded canvas with his back resting against one of the two fireside logs. In his lap he had a short length of rope on his right thigh and the end of a longer piece on his left. He untwisted the strands for about six inches back from each end, then stubbed the two pieces together with the strands splayed out and alternated as they met and crossed one another. With a piece of string he tied the strands of the right piece to the tight twisted part of the left piece. Then he rotated the rope on his right so that the strands separated in tense curls, and he tucked the first strand from the left piece over and under a strand on the right. He repeated the operation with the other two strands, then did all three strands again. With the right side finished, he turned the whole rope around and spliced the other side, now on his right. When he was done, he had what he had learned to call a short splice. How strong it was would be seen when a horse pulled against it.

Hoofbeats called his attention to the path that came into his camp from the main trail. Fielding set aside the rope and stood up. As the rider came past the last box elder tree, Fielding recognized the
build and posture of Bill Selby. The man slowed his horse from a lope to a walk but did not stop until he was within a few yards of the campfire area. Dust rose to stirrup level, and the horse was barely stopped when Selby swung down and stood away with the reins in his gloved hands.

His face was flushed, and his lower eyelids were puffy as usual. His light blue eyes were full of worry, and his jaw hinges bulged as he took in a deep, nervous breath through his nose.

“We've got trouble, Tom. Big trouble.” His chest rose as he breathed again. “Richard Lodge has been shot.”

“The hell. Was he hurt bad?”

“Hurt? He was killed.”

The words stunned Fielding, and he took a few seconds to absorb their impact. “Killed? When did this happen? Where?”

“I went out to his place yesterday afternoon. It looked as if it had happened earlier in the day. He was lyin' facedown in the dirt, right in front of his cabin. Both horses in the corral. Hoofprints in front, looked like one rider, but no sign of anyone gettin' off a horse. The deputy's been out there, but he says he doesn't have much to go on.”

“Yesterday, you say.”

“That's right. I didn't know you were back, or I would have looked you up. But I was busy with all of this until late last night anyway.”

“Yesterday,” Fielding repeated. “I was coming back from Cogman's Hole. Along about ten to eleven in the morning, probably closer to ten, I ran into that jackass Ray Foote. Turns out he works for Cronin now, and George Pence was along with
him. Came out of the greasewood a few minutes later.”

“That's probably about the time someone shot Richard.” Selby's eyes were ablaze with worry. “I tell you, Tom, this is bad. Real bad for all of us. Everyone liked Richard except you-know-who.” Selby looked around as he finished his sentence.

Fielding gave a slow shake of the head as he felt his spirits sinking. Lodge was dead, never to pick up another stone in his pasture, and just as he had said, Selby was worried about himself. It took Fielding a long moment to break through the numbness and find words.

“It's bad, all right. Bad for everyone, but especially Richard. He lost the last thing a man can lose.” Fielding looked off into the distance and came back. “I saw Adler in town when I came through yesterday afternoon. Put it at three or so. He was in front of the post office with his tagalong Cedric, who'll probably give him an alibi for the whole day. But it would have been plumb easy for Adler to go out there by himself, shoot Richard down in cold blood, and either go back to the Argyle or meet up with Cedric in town. It'll be hard to prove, but I'd bet ten to one it was Adler.”

Selby winced, and his eyes moved to the side. Fielding had the impression that Selby did not like to name names or even hear them spoken. As for Fielding, he could picture Adler as he had seen the man the day before, standing straight up in his white shirt and brown vest, with his gun and holster in plain view.

Selby spoke. “Everyone's got to step careful here. The deputy asked me if anyone had anything
against Richard, and I told him about the set-to over in their camp that day. I think we need to let him ask the questions.”

“And what do you plan to do?”

Selby blinked a couple of times. “We need to hang together, Tom, and be careful. No one sticks his neck out until we know what the deputy finds out.”

“You can pretty well predict that, can't you?”

“I don't know. If he asks around, maybe someone saw something.”

“Sure. Like the fellow up in Johnson County.” Fielding did not think he had to tell the rest, as it was well known how a man had seen Frank Canton and heard shots at ten in the morning at the place where Johnnie Tisdale was shot in the back and his two wagon horses and little dog were shot as well. The witness was so scared that he jumbled his testimony at the inquest, and Canton walked free. And that was a case in which there was a known witness. In others, like the case on the Sweetwater, the witnesses disappeared.

Selby did not answer, so Fielding spoke again. “Are his two horses still standing in the corral?”

“Oh, no,” Selby answered. “I took them to my place so they'd be taken care of.” He said it with the tone of someone who had performed his expected duty.

“Saddle, too?”

“Well, yeah. He had two of 'em. No sense in leavin' 'em where someone could get his hands on 'em.”

Fielding decided not to pursue that line any more at the moment. “So they've got him in town?”

“That's right.” Selby nodded his head in his officious way. “Funeral at ten in the morning, tomorrow. I was afraid you might miss it.”

The group that gathered at the cemetery consisted of Selby, Roe, Isabel, Leonora, Fielding, and Mullins. The wheat farmer would probably not have shown up except that he had been asked to work in the café for a couple of days while Leonora took some time off.

After the service, which was short and not very comforting, the group left the coffin next to the open hole and the pile of dirt and went to the parlor of the house where Leonora rented a room. Selby had arranged for cake and cold meats to be brought in from the café, and Mullins tended to the sideboard where the food was laid out.

A desolate feeling pervaded the room, and no one spoke much. When everyone had eaten and set their plates aside, Mullins poured coffee in china cups. The group sat on upholstered chairs arranged in an oval, and as there were three unoccupied, Mullins poured himself a cup of coffee and sat in respectful silence.

“He was a good man,” said Selby.

Fielding started to speak, then cleared his throat and said, “The best.”

Roe sniffed, rubbed his nose both ways, and said, “He was. Never a cross word to his friends, never owed a man a nickel.”

“Didn't complain,” Selby added.

Leonora, still wearing the black veil she had worn to the cemetery, took a slow breath and sat up straight. She had a tremor in her voice as she said,
“He was all that, and more. Generous, kind, intelligent.” She set her cup on its saucer, and it rattled until she stilled it. With her chin raised, she said, “He didn't deserve to die that way.”

Selby and Roe looked at their own coffee cups, but Isabel's eyes rose and met Fielding's.

“I remember the last time I saw him,” she said. “He played a few songs for us.”

“Oh, he was fond of music,” Selby put in. “Wrote a few airs himself.”

“He liked birds,” said Fielding, caught up in the sadness of the moment. “Songbirds.” Then he felt silly for having said what he did.

“It's too bad,” Mullins offered. “A man in his prime . . .” Mullins's sentence trailed off.

Fielding steadied his voice as he spoke again. “He offered to ride along with me to Cogman's Hole. I should have let him go. We would have still been up on the flats at that time.”

Leonora set her cup on the saucer and held the two pieces with both hands. “It wouldn't have mattered,” she said in a bitter tone. “The cowards would have gotten him one way or another.”

Selby and Roe did not look up, and an uncomfortable silence hung in the room until Fielding said, “I think you're right. The part I left out was that he offered to go along for my sake. He wasn't worried about himself.”

“That was Richard,” said Leonora. “More of a man than the ones that came looking for him.”

Selby drew himself up as if he was about to speak, and Fielding was afraid he was going to say that it looked as if only one man did the job, but then Selby relaxed and said nothing. Leonora did not speak
again, either. A few minutes later, Selby stood up and took leave. Roe followed, taking Isabel with him. Leonora withdrew, and Fielding helped Mullins carry the leftover cold food to the café.

Fielding woke to the sound of birds fluttering and squawking. As he peeked out of the flap of his pyramid tent, he could see the young cotton-woods against the gray sky of morning. A flock of starlings had moved in, and the birds were traveling back and forth across the creek, between the cottonwoods and the box elders. There wasn't much food for them here, he thought. Even if he had a shotgun, it would not be easy to run off a flock like this one. He would just endure them and not leave out anything for them to drop their deposits on. Before long they would move on, and if they followed the creek they would find a patch of chokecherry bushes, where they would strip all the fruit before it ripened. After that they could go ten or fifteen miles north and plunder a wheat field.

He tended to his horses and got a fire going, then boiled some coffee to go with his cold biscuits. Nothing tasted good, and he had an irritated, dissatisfied feeling mixed in with the dread and sadness. If there was nothing good about Bracken's death, there was even less so about Lodge's, and brooding in camp alone had not improved his state of mind.

After breakfast, he put his few things away and saddled the bay horse. With his other horses corralled, he left his camp to the starlings and rode off across country. His plan was to visit Selby first and
then Roe, and he didn't want to ride past the junk collector's on the way.

When he rode into Selby's yard, the man came out to meet him. Selby looked ready for the day with his hat on and his gloves in his hip pocket, but he seemed fidgety as he said good morning and gave a smile.

Fielding returned the greeting and dismounted.

Selby sounded as if he was making an effort to appear cheerful. “What's on your mind today,

Tom?”

“More of the same, I'd guess. And yourself?”

“Likewise. Are you goin' out on another trip before long?”

“In a couple of days.”

“Well, that's good. Keep you busy, get you away so your mind isn't on all this other stuff.”

“It seems to follow me.”

“Oh.” Selby drew his mouth together as he closed off the sound.

Fielding tried to gauge the man but couldn't. It seemed as if Selby had reconsidered things and was now avoiding both comment and confrontation. Fielding spoke. “I'll tell you, Bill, I dropped in to see if we could come up with some idea of how we were going to do things.”