Stands a Calder Man (17 page)

The corners of his mouth were turned up in the closest effort he made to a smile as he bid the ranchers good day and ambled off at the same leisurely pace that had brought him there.

“I heard a rumor the town was thinking about hiring a sheriff, but I wasn't aware they actually had.” Benteen sent a questioning glance at the man beside him. “This must have just happened.”

“The first of the month.”

“Has there been trouble?”

“A few minor incidents, nothing serious.” The rancher shrugged. “There isn't an outfit around that hasn't had to let some cowboys go. Most of them have
been hanging around town until their money's gone. You know what the boys are like, Benteen. They get bored with nothing to do and start hazing the drylanders. Basically, it's just harmless fun, but they get a little rough sometimes.”

The homesteaders were green, so they were the most likely ones to bear the brunt of a cowboy's frustration. And if a homesteader's sense of humor didn't match a cowboy's, the cowboy would be more than willing to back up his opinion on the matter. Benteen was certain a few scuffles had resulted.

“There's been complaints, too, about Sonny's saloon—and the ‘criminal element' that hangs out there.” Ed Mace stressed the derogatory reference to the men who rode for them. “It happens every time you get a bunch of those high-minded farmers. It won't be long before they'll be wanting to close his place down. God help Fannie when the pious horsefaces find out about her.”

“The next thing you know they'll be drawing a deadline the way they did in the trail towns,” Benteen suggested in dry amusement.

“With the respectable folk on one side and the cattlemen on the other,” Ed Mace elaborated with gathering resentment. “And us forbidden to cross the line. It was us, and men like us, that built this town. Nobody is going to tell me or my men where we can walk in it. Not ever.”

“I hope neither one of us sees that day.” There were too many changes coming too fast to be able to predict what tomorrow might bring. But the water was simmering in the cauldron. If much more wood was put in the fire, it was liable to boil over. And there didn't seem to be any lack of available fuel. A couple of musicians had climbed onto the makeshift bandstand to begin tuning their instruments. “It looks like the dance is about to start,” Benteen observed. “I guess I'd better find my wife.”

It wasn't much more than a block from the roadhouse saloon to the flat area being used for the dance,
but a cowboy never walks when he can ride. Somebody brought the word that the dance was about ready to start, and the cowboys began spilling out of the saloon onto their horses, some of them taking the time to stuff a bottle into their saddlebags.

None of them were drunk but they were all feeling good, shouting and laughing as they urged their horses into a canter over the short distance. Webb rode right in the midst of them, more sober than most with only one beer under his belt. The wagons were a barricade that kept them from riding right up to the dance floor. Forced to dismount, they tied their horses to the nearest available wheel of any buckboard and worked their way forward to the short wooden platform where the dancing had already started.

At the edge of the platform, they began spreading out, halting in clusters of three and four to review the potential dance partners that were present. All the homesteaders were strung along the opposite side. Webb noticed his parents among the dancers on the floor, and Ruth dancing with the foreman of the Brickman Ranch.

With the exception of a few ranchers' daughters, the pickings of eligible girls were slim on the cowboys' side of the floor. It was a different story on the homesteaders' side, where there seemed to be an equal number of males and females.

“Look at the bosom on that gal with the yellow braids.” Young Shorty nudged Webb with his elbow. “Hot damn! She's the one for me.”

Just as Webb spotted the young girl in the white pinafore, he saw Lilli standing beside her and he went still. She was wearing a bright blue dress that he knew had to match her eyes. As she watched the dancers, she swayed in time with the music.

“I spotted her first,” Abe Garvey insisted. “You take the one in blue next to her.”

“She's married,” Webb stated flatly, dropping his gaze and forcing it in another direction.

“The hell you say.” Abe frowned.

“I got dibs on Yellow Braids,” Shorty insisted. “It ain't my fault, Abe, that you didn't say something before me.”

As Young Shorty Niles started across the floor, Abe hurried to follow a step behind him. “When she turns you down, Shorty, just move over, 'cause I'm right behind you.”

“Are you gonna try your luck?” Nate inquired, sending a sidelong look at Webb.

“No.” But he sensed the closeness of Nate's scrutiny and let a wry smile lift one corner of his mouth. “I'm going to let them blaze the trail. That way I can travel faster following their sign.”

“Don't look like they're doin' too good,” Nate surmised.

Reluctantly, Webb let his gaze swing back to the girl with the yellow braids without continuing to Lilli. A tall, stern-looking man of Scandinavian descent was standing next to the golden-haired girl. Young Shorty evidently had already been turned down and stood watching while Abe tried his luck. The girl shook her head in refusal and edged closer to the tall man next to her.

“Maybe she's married, too,” Webb suggested, not intending for his voice to sound so bitter.

“Nope. That big Swede next to her is a fella named Anderson. He's got a whole brood of kids and his wife is about the same size he is. Big woman,” Nate stated. “They staked a claim on some land buttin' up to the Triple C on the southeast corner. I saw 'em out working in their fields a few weeks back. The gal's his daughter, all right.”

As that song ended and another started, Webb noticed that Abe and Shorty weren't the only ones getting turned down. So were the cowboys from all the other outfits. The drylanders had no intention of letting their innocent daughters associate with the likes of a bunch of no-account cowboys. At least, Webb suspected that was their thinking.

Even the dance floor appeared divided, the homesteaders keeping to one side and the ranchers on the other. Webb realized that the electricity in the atmosphere wasn't all generated by the holiday mood.

At first the cowboys were good-natured about the refused invitations to dance. They were ready for a party and weren't about to be denied it. So they turned their attention on the female members of their own side, dancing with married and single women alike.

As Webb approached his mother, he gallantly swept off his hat and turned to offer her his arm. “May I have the next dance?”

She laughed and tucked her hand under his arm. “I've been saving it just for you.” When they were on the dance floor and had completed the first set of waltz steps, she tilted her head to him. “I thought you weren't coming.”

“Grizzly chased me off the ranch with a butcher knife.” With his mother, he could get away with a light reply, so he did. It was easier than delving into the reasons that had brought him here when he had insisted he wasn't coming.

“Are you going to dance with Ruth?” she couldn't resist asking, hoping he might have reconsidered. She supposed it was the flaw of all women to live on hope.

“I haven't noticed that she's had any shortage of partners,” he replied.

“She hasn't. In fact, she's danced every dance.”

As they made another circle, Webb noticed Lilli on the other side of the dance floor. She was in the arms of the whiskered and stoop-shouldered man she had married. It grated him to see her smiling face turned upward to that man. It was wrong for them to be together.

“Webb? What's the matter?”

“Nothing.” His expression closed up, letting her see none of his feelings, as he faced his mother once more. She looked unconvinced, but didn't press him for a more revealing answer.

When the song ended, he escorted her back to his father's side and returned to stand with his outfit. Disappointment and anger were knotting his insides, twisting him up with reckless urges, stirring up wants that were better left dormant.

The dark grumblings around him seemed to echo his mood. The looks being sent across the dance floor at the unattached females were turning into glares of resentment. The homesteader gals were like candy being dangled in front of a boy with a craving for sweets. And every time he reached for it, he got his hand slapped. And like little boys, the cowboys were growing sullen and restive.

“They think they're too good for us, that's what.”

“Some of them gals are downright ugly. We was doin' 'em a favor just askin' 'em to dance.”

“Look at 'em, thinking their daughters are so innocent an' pure. I bet they ain't that way out behind the barn.”

“They ain't nothing but a bunch of scissorbills. I'd like to know where they got the idea they're better than us.”

Echoing comments traveled up and down the clustering line of cowboys, resentment building among the ranks led by Hobie Evans. It wouldn't take much to turn it violent. Webb sensed it, and a part of him didn't care.

When the band began playing another one of those fast folk-dance songs foreign to most of the cowboys' ears, they took exception to the accordion music. This time, they didn't confine their complaints to themselves. They said them loud so the dancers could hear.

“Don't you know any good music?”

“Somebody kick that guy with the squeezebox off the bandstand!”

“Yeah! We want to hear some fiddlin'!”

Nate sidled closer to Webb. “Looks like this might be an excitin' party after all.”

“It's either going to be a dance or a fight,” Webb agreed. “I don't see the point in waiting to find out
which. Get Shorty and Abe. We're going to settle it one way or the other.”

When all three were gathered with him, Webb angled for the corner of the bandstand on the ranchers' side. His objective was Doyle Pettit, minus his hat, goggles, and coat, standing by the hood of his shiny black automobile and proudly demonstrating to the curious the function of the crank.

“Hey, Webb! I didn't know you were here!” Doyle strode forward, glad-handing him. “I'll take you for a ride and show you how Ford's invention works. It's the first one of its kind in these parts. I got it—”

“Later.” The invitation was curtly rejected as Webb took the man by the arm and propelled him toward the dance floor. “Those drylanders think you're their friend, so they trust you. All five of us are going over there, but it's up to you to convince them to let us dance with their women.”

“I don't know if they'll listen to me.” Doyle pulled back.

“You'd better hope you picked up some of Wessel's smooth talk” was Webb's reply. “Kreuger's the ringleader, so don't waste your time speaking to anyone else.”

Halfway across the dance floor, they were intercepted by a slim, quiet man about their age. The badge pinned on his jacket identified him as the new sheriff of Blue Moon. His attention was centered on Doyle Pettit, although he had taken in the rest of them and marked them in his memory.

“Mr. Pettit, I'm hoping you aren't thinking about starting any trouble,” he said calmly.

“I merely intend to speak to them as a friend. I don't want trouble any more than you do, Sheriff,” Doyle insisted with an expansive smile.

But the sheriff looked at his companions to ascertain their intentions. Webb's level gaze didn't avoid the silent probe. “We're going over there looking for peace. If it turns out the other way, it won't be our doing.”

“You stated yourself plain.” The sheriff nodded and moved away, satisfied that his duty was done for the time being.

When they started forward again, Webb searched the silent-growing band of homesteaders until he found Franz Kreuger, The man's chin was already aggressively thrust in their direction. Webb's attention was distracted by the couple standing next to Kreuger. The couple was Lilli Reisner and her husband. The hardening knot in the pit of his stomach told him he had known all along the two neighbors would be together. He realized that subconsciously he had been counting on it.

When Lilli recognized Webb Calder approaching them with Mr. Pettit, a hint of excitement threaded her nerves while a shaft of apprehension caused her to dart a quick look at Stefan. Seeing the wariness and suspicion in his expression, she was glad she hadn't told him of the visit Webb had paid to their farm. Stefan had spent so much time in the company of their neighbor, Franz Kreuger, that his attitude toward cowmen had hardened. She didn't think she could have convinced him that Webb had been only trying to forewarn them of the problems they would face, not threaten them. Besides, it had been an unsettling meeting in other ways, so it had seemed best not to mention it.

The beat of her heart picked up its tempo as Mr. Pettit stopped in front of their neighbor. Before the dance started, it had been the general consensus among the homesteaders not to associate with the brash and noisy cowhands and thus avoid the unpleasantness that had marred many other occasions in town. At first the cowboys had been so polite and respectful with their invitations to dance that Lilli thought Stefan and the other men had misjudged them. But their increasingly loud and taunting remarks were confirmation that the menfolk had been right.

Still, Lilli didn't want to include Webb Calder in the same category with the other half-wild cowboys. If there was no warmth in the way he regarded Franz Kreuger, then perhaps it was because he was shown
none. Her female vanity was pricked by Webb's failure to give her even a passing glance. She hadn't expected him to ignore her. It stung a little. Lilli shifted her attention to Doyle Pettit, eloquently appealing to Franz Kreuger to persuade the homesteaders to change their minds about the cowboys.