Ride the Man Down (7 page)

“We expected that.”

“I know. What are you going to do about it?”

“You heard Will say the other night. When we get these little outfits off our backs we're going to work on the others.”

“When?”

Celia shrugged.

“Ladder cattle are around the wells now.”

Celia said with exasperation, “Sam, you can't be subtle. What are you trying to say?”

Sam said stubbornly, “I'm trying to stop this before it gets started. Allan will wait until Bide's moved in farther than he has, and then he'll move farther. What about the outfits in the Indigos too? Harve Garretson and the others?”

“They've always been friends with Hatchet,” Celia said hotly. “They won't take a foot of Hatchet range!”

“So Will thinks,” Sam said heavily. “My hunch is that the Salt Hills and Indigo outfits will be standing in your garden patch arguing who gets it unless you do something.”

“What more can we do?” Celia asked resentfully.

Sam should have seen the warning light in Celia's rain-gray eyes, but he was not a sharp man in the ways of women. He had a point to make, and he went at it in the only way he knew, which was head on.

“I saw Bide in town yesterday. Talked with him.”

Celia kept ominously quiet.

“There's just one thing keeping Bide in this fight.”

“Hatchet's range, of course.”

“No.” Sam paused. “It's Will.”

Celia said with a deceptively mild curiosity, “How did he happen to say that?”

“I asked him what would satisfy him,” Sam explained. “He said he hadn't even thought of it. All he wanted was to get Will out of the way.”

Celia came slowly to her feet now, and when she spoke her voice held only the faintest undercurrent of anger. “In other words, you arranged a deal with Bide. He'd quit if Will would go?”

Sam straightened up, nodding. “Yes, you might call it that. That was understood, kind of. It—”

“On whose authority did you do this?” Celia asked. The anger was really out now, and Sam looked startled.

“Why—nobody's,” he said resentfully. “I tried to get a basis for settling this row, is all.”

“And the basis is that Will goes?” Celia's tone was one of contempt and scorn.

Sam looked at her narrowly, not angry, but trying to reach back of her anger.

“Who's Will that Hatchet needs him so bad you and John will wreck it to keep him?” he asked slowly.

“Only Dad's friend! My friend and John's! The best cattleman this country ever saw!” Celia flared.

Sam's square face altered slightly. “I'd always thought,” he said dryly, “the sun could come up without his help. Maybe I was wrong.”

“That's not fair, Sam!”

“I always thought he could be wrong sometimes,” Sam went on with dogged sarcasm. “Maybe I was wrong again.”

“But you're wrong now, and Will's right,” Celia said instantly.

“Oh.” Sam just stared at her, as if he'd seen something new in her. “I knew you were the one that kept Will on here. I thought, though, if it ever came to a choice between Will and Hatchet, Will would go.”

Celia said hotly, “If
I
have anything to do with it Will won't go! So forget it, Sam!”

Sam just looked at her curiously. “Sure. Sure,” he said softly, mildly. “But not before John knows this.”

“I'll tell him,” Celia said defiantly.

Sam regarded her curiously. She was stirred, really angry, over what he'd said about Will. Talk of Will had always been avoided between them, usually because Sam didn't like him and Celia did. He had excused this in her on the grounds of sentiment. Will had helped bring Hatchet to power, and old Phil, who was like Will, treated him as a son. But there was a limit to sentiment, and this was it. Sam knew an honest bafflement now. Will was only a foreman—smart, but too reckless and unstable—and he stood in the way of Hatchet. Yet Celia, who would own Hatchet and who would be his wife, couldn't see this.

A sudden unwanted suspicion came to Sam then, and he put it scornfully aside as beneath consideration. Celia was watching him with a defiance in her eyes that Sam did not care to bait. He picked up his hat and said quietly, “I'll be getting on.”

Celia's anger melted then. She came over to him and put her hands on his shoulders and buried her face in his chest and was quiet a moment.

She said presently, “I'm sorry, Sam. I—guess I'm worried about Uncle John.”

Sam said, soberly, “You've got a tongue.”

Celia looked at him and smiled fleetingly. “I guess you'll have to take that along with the rest of me, Sam.” She turned away from him and saw the cookies on the table.

“Want to take some home?” she asked.

“I guess not,” Sam said stolidly. “They're not very good.” When Celia turned to look at him he was putting on his hat, oblivious to her gaze. “I'll be getting on. So long,” he said placidly.

“So long, Sam.”

When he was gone she kept staring at the door. She heard him ride out, and only then did she move.

She came up to the table, picked up a cooky, and nibbled judiciously on it. Then she gathered up the paper by its corners, went to the stove, lifted the lid, and threw the cookies in the fire. Those in the oven followed.

Will and Jim Young rode into Kennedy's place around noon. Kennedy was spading the muddy vegetable patch in front of his shack.

As they approached Will saw that Kennedy was almost bogged down in mud. His boots were balled with it; his hands and forearms were caked, and the yard between the patch and the porch looked as if a herd of horses had been driven across it.

Jim Young drawled quietly, “He likes diggin' mud, looks like.”

Will nodded agreement. Kennedy appeared not to see them until they were almost into the yard. Then he straightened up, leaned on his spade, and watched them approach.

Will reined up just outside the patch and looked at the furrows of mud and said, “What's your hurry, Wes?”

Kennedy spat and tramped across to them and jammed his spade in the mud. “I tell you, Will. I got so sick of the inside of that shack while it was rainin' that I just made up some outside work this mornin'.”

He grinned and looked at Will, and then his glance slid away. He rubbed his face with his palm and got dirt in his mouth and spat it out, and then glanced nervously at Jim Young. The Texan was watching him with a veiled curiosity. Wes said cordially, “Hoddy.”

“Howdy,” Jim said.

Will looked around the place and then returned his gaze to Kennedy. “You were here yesterday, Wes?”

“That's right. Lost some cattle?”

“Why, no,” Will murmured. He was looking at Wes, and his green eyes were watchful, probing. Kennedy, seeing it, was afraid of this big man; he was so afraid of him that he had declined to join Marriner in moving onto Hatchet. And now, with this unbearable secret locked inside, he had to face him. Cavanaugh had told him to bluff it out, but Kennedy had known even then that this was impossible. And now Will had come, and his horse was standing almost on the spot where John Evarts had fallen and which Kennedy had tried to cover up.

He waited, and when Will just kept watching him his glance raised to Will and fell instantly. He studied the handle of the spade and he felt sweat begin to bead his face.

“Anything wrong, Wes?” Will asked mildly. Kennedy made himself look at Will. “Wrong?” He cleared his throat, pulling his voice down from an uncertain treble to its normal register. “Nothin' wrong with me, Will. Why?”

“You look kind of worried.”

“Why should I?” Kennedy forced his voice into feigning anger. He looked sternly at Will and again he couldn't hold Will's glance. He looked instead at Jim Young and blurted, “Who's this fella, Will?”

Will said mildly, implacably, “John Evarts headed this way yesterday, Wes. Seen him?”

Kennedy closed his eyes, afraid he would faint, and then he dragged his glance up to Will again. “I ain't seen him, Will. Why would he come here?”

Will said gently, ignoring the question, “You're sure, Wes?”

“I been here all the time!” Wes cried.

Will reached down with one swift movement and gathered in Kennedy's shirt and hauled him roughly against his leg. “You're kind of worried, Wes,” he drawled.

“I'll tell you! I'll tell you!” Kennedy bawled.

When Will let go Kennedy's knees gave way and he fell. Dragging himself to his feet, his mind was working with a panicked swiftness. He knew without thinking that if he told Will the truth he was a dead man.

He reached out and steadied himself against Will's bay horse and said, “Will, I stole a Hatchet cow,” and he looked at Will.

The blazing disappointment in Will's eyes was like a flag of hope to Kennedy, and his words began to tumble out uncontrollably.

“I done it, Will; figured you wouldn't miss one more after all you lost last winter, so I stole her. I butchered her and buried the hide and I got the meat. But I'll pay you back. I swear I will. I got a cow you can have. She's right close to Hatchet now, and I'll drive her over to your place. I—”

“Quit it,” Will said in weary disgust.

Kennedy stopped talking. He was almost afraid to breathe as he tried to read the expression on Will's face. It was one of bitter disappointment and puzzlement.

“Evarts wasn't here?” Will asked.

“No sir,” Kennedy said flatly. He knew that Will had accepted the explanation of his fear, and he had the cunning now to see that talk would save him, not silence.

“Will, you ain't goin' to hold this against me, are you, if I give you a cow? I swear I got one you can have, and I'll do anythin' you say to make up for it. I'll even let you have—”

“All right,” Will said impatiently. He looked at Jim Young and shook his head once and turned his horse around.

Kennedy stood there, breathing softly, looking at the ground, knowing Will was watching him, hoping against hope that he would not have to look at Will again.

Will said wearily, “Bring a cow over, Wes.”

“Yes sir,” Wes said, still not looking up.

He heard the two horses start to move, and then he raised his glance. He watched Will and the Hatchet hand ride off out of sight. Then he started to shiver and he could not stop.

I got to get out of here
, he thought wildly.
He'll be back
.

He started to run and then hauled up and looked in the direction Will had gone, as if Will might be watching.

He sauntered, almost, toward the brush shed where his pony was corralled.

And no power in the world could have made him lift his eyes to the timbered slope above where John Evarts lay in a fresh grave.

Once in the shed, he went about saddling his pony with a wild and panicked haste.

In the timber Will said, “What do you think?” to Jim Young.

The Texan shook his head. “He's too triflin' to hurt a man.”

It was what Will thought, too, only he wasn't sure. In the beginning he'd been so dead certain that Kennedy was hiding knowledge of John Evarts that he would have staked his life on it—and then the confession of cow stealing changed that. And yet he wasn't quite satisfied.

He said impatiently, “We'll take a look, Jim.” He gave Jim instructions to cut for sign on the trails to west. He himself was taking the other side of this trail to Kennedy's.

He dropped down the timbered slope a mile and turned off a dim trail that worked deeper in toward Indian Ridge and Cavanaugh's to the east.

As he rode along it the feeling came upon him that this was useless. The long hours of rain had washed this country clean of sign, and John Evarts had disappeared in the middle of that rain. The trail here held the ridges of old tracks, but they might be a month or a day old.

Presently he came to a faint cattle trail that angled southeast, toward the foothills of the Salts, and he turned down it. There were fresh deer tracks here, but nothing else, and he knew a savage impatience how. Why would John Evarts disappear? Not voluntarily. And the only men who knew of his sudden change of heart, his decision to fight, were Bide and Cavanaugh and their men.

But immediately he knew that was not right. The word would have got out, and any man in this country, acting on the theory that it was better to get rid of Evarts now than fight him later, could have ambushed him. Will turned his mind away from that possibility.

Presently the trail dipped down to skirt a small stream, and Will paused to let his hone drink. On the opposite bank he saw fresh tracks, and he roweled his horse over, a sudden excitement within him. And then it died. There were two pairs of tracks—one of a horseman, the other of a cow at a dead run. Some rider this morning had been pushing cattle out of the brush toward the flats.

Will put his horse around to drink again and took his feet out of the stirrups. Morosely he rolled a cigarette, idly listening to a pair of jays quarreling back in the timber. He was unable to conquer an obscure feeling of guilt within himself now, for he believed that somehow, in some way, John's disappearance was connected with his sudden change of heart there at the seep. And that affair was Will's doing. He lighted his smoke and absently held the match until it burned his fingers.

Afterward he pulled his horse away from the water and set off down the trail, wondering what he was going to tell Celia tonight. A man didn't vanish off the face of the earth and leave no sign, but how was he to explain that he couldn't find the sign?

In late afternoon he came to the edge of the timber and looked across the rolling country beyond, noticing without much surprise, that although this was Hatchet grass there were cattle on it.

And then his attention narrowed. Grazing among the cattle out there was a horse.

He put his own horse down on the flat among the cattle, who watched him curiously, and he did not even pause to identify their brand.