The Overlanders (2 page)

He listened, the rich timbre of her voice wandering through the closed doors of his mind. This wasn’t what he wanted, but she had a crew and she had stock. Eyes half-shut, Grete Farraday considered. Four men, if they were handled right… He thought of Ben and that gaunt one, Idaho; but he was still a far piece from Lincoln and he might get turned down there. “Let’s hear your proposition.”

She hid the lifting surge of her spirit. “Good horses in Texas are a drug on the market. But in Arizona, I’ve been led to believe, a really top horse will just about fetch anything you might ask for. I’d like to get these Shilohs over there.”

He shook his head. “You’ve been misinformed.”

“About what?”

“Offhand I’d say a lot of things. You’d be lucky to get through with this stock. The country’s lousy with owlhooters.”

She smiled at his gun, brought her glance up and said, “You can have four mares, your own pick, if we make it.”

Grete didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted. “Not many settlers can afford to pay anything like what you’d ask. Your market’s with the sporting crowd and unless your outfit’s fast on the trigger —”

“All right. I’ve got eighty bred mares — the stud is by Steel Dust out of a daughter of Old Billy. You can have one-tenth of all the mares we arrive with and half the foals that are dropped on the way.”

Sureness seemed to be a part of this woman and he sensed something here, something carefully hidden, that she knew and he did not. He studied her carefully. “I wouldn’t of took you for a drinking woman.”

Sary Hollis laughed. “It’s a deal?”

“No.”

Her look winnowed down. He felt the weird creep of an unfamiliar excitement. There was something about this full-bodied woman… “The only deal I’d make with you would be an even-Steven share, fifty-fifty, straight across the board.” He saw the shock in her face, the rebellious fury. “And there’d be only one mouth passing orders — mine.”

He saw the knuckles go white against her fists. “Go ahead,” he said, and grinned derisively. In the clutch of silence she stared back at him, hating him. With chin tilting bitterly she pulled back her shoulders. “That’s your price?”

“That’s it.”

She considered the uncompromising cut of his jaw, the beard-stubbled cheeks, the solid length of his body, yellow-haired, bold as brass, with a splatter of dust streaked across granite features.

She drew a shuddering breath and bent her head to hide its secrets.

He could feel her revulsion, the cold blaze of her hate. These were nothing. There was only one thing he cared about — getting that meadow land away from Crotton. If her crew and horses could be bent to that purpose…

His eyes kept watching her face with grim patience until, abruptly fed up with it, he pushed open the door and felt again for the step.

“When do you propose to take over?”

He left the foot where it was. “Soon as your boys get some chuck under their belts.”

“You drive a hard bargain. I doubt if your knowledge of the country and conditions can be worth so steep a price.”

But she was hooked and both of them knew it. Grete said, to allow her some vanity, “You figure on getting more than that.” He wondered how far he could trust her and what the situation was between her and that Ben. It stood to reason she was covering up something.

His glance caught sight of a pendant cameo swung from a fine gold chain about her neck. The backing — some sort of red agate or petrified wood — appeared thick enough to be hollow inside — not that he gave a damn whose picture she carried.

She kind of jumped when he snorted. He growled, “What are you scairt of?” and saw her visibly stiffen, watched her eyes back off and try to hide behind scorn.

She pushed out a hand. “I’ll keep my part of —”

“And I’ll get you there.”

She turned away, hating him, hating herself even more but no less determined than when, quitting Lubbock, she’d left everything behind.

She could imagine his eyes prying through the piled-up silence.
Why doesn’t he leave?
her mind cried edgily. “After we’ve eaten,” she said, “I’ll tell them.”

“Probably take a little time to get this stock sold. You got a place in mind to work from?”

She hated to admit it. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’ve got plenty of grass.”

It wasn’t until the words tramped through her mind a second time that she caught hold of their significance. It brought her head up sharply. “You’ve got a ranch?” She stood completely still. “Half of it’s mine then — that’s what you said! Straight across the board, an even fifty-fifty.”

The glint of his half-shut eyes seemed to mock her but he admitted her claim with a careless nod. “That’s right.” He grinned. “Be like traveling in double harness… Well, I’ll be around.”

He ducked through the door, leaving a squeak of dry hinges.

She couldn’t think why she should feel so disquieted. She’d looked for losses, and three years with Tate… Even with the horse money halved she would be in better shape than she could ever remember. She’d have half that ranch!

She tried to hug the thought to her but the glow the prospect warranted someway wouldn’t quite come alive. And it wasn’t the succession of faded hopes, or the lost dreams remembered, or the years tied down to a sick man and debts… Was a woman ever able to pick up the pieces?

She sat down on the bunk, staring unseeingly at the wall. It wasn’t even the thought of the law catching up — she’d got used to that phantom hovering over her now. Like her worries about Ben and the misgivings aroused by the men he had chosen. She got up, still dissatisfied, to look in the piece of cracked mirror, searching the eyes that stared back.
He’ll do it
, she thought.
He’ll get them through if anyone can
.

Grete Farraday. She tried the name on her tongue, unaccountably shivering. He knew she was running. His kind would see that no outfit would take horses through the Jornada without they were fools or trying to lose something back of them.

Her glance touched the baling wire holding together one leg of the bunk. She had always been strong but would she be strong enough?

What are you scairt of?

Yes. That was it. He had the alarmingest eyes she had ever looked into.

• • •

When Farraday left he stood a moment on the step to bring the campsite into focus. He saw the yellow wink of firelight and, against the shifting dark of stock, the shape of a man crouched over a skillet.

His glance sought the roundabout shadows. Rope-hardened fingers joggled his pistol, resettling it more to his liking while he stood with cocked head listening into the dark, corraling and correlating each scratch of sound that came out of the night’s deep stillness.

This concern with little things was the price a man paid for having been top screw at Swallowfork, for having been the one who implemented Crotton’s orders. The twist of an eye, a shifting shadow — even the way a man belched in this country could have astonishing significance and spell that thin shred of difference between continued breathing and the final end of hope.

This was what experience had taught.

Now Farraday, sighting his horse, moved toward it, recollections of Sary Hollis uneasily tugging his attention from the maze of details he must scrap or someway alter to fetch the focus of new facts into line with his original problem.

The girl had fled some kind of trouble which might not or might come down on him. This crew had to be evaluated, tightened, each man of it seen in his proper perspective. There was no screen for halftones in Farraday’s head when it came to separating sheep from goats. There’d be the natural animosities of change. The girl’s character would have to be reckoned with. This bunch wouldn’t willingly be reconciled to him.

He was half minded for a moment to shove on for Lincoln, pride and time being the biggest things that stood in his way. There was also the possibility Murphy-Dolan wouldn’t go for it. He expected he’d be wiser to make the best of what he had. Speaking to the dun he caught up the reins and, with them contained in his grip on the horn, bent to twist the stirrup for the toe of his boot.

The dark wheel of a shape came suddenly beside him. The hard end of something slammed into his ribs and gaunt Idaho’s voice, honed thin by the rasp of repression, fell like cold fingers across the arch of Grete’s spine. “One grunt an’ you get it!”

A leaping anger pushed its brash urge at Farraday, but a man didn’t argue with a gun-snout reminding him how close he stood to death.

“What’re you tryin’ to pull around here? Talk, you damned maverick!” The gun dug in harder. “I got ears in my head!”

“Then you know what the deal is.”

“She’s not for the likes of you!” In the dancing gleam of the leaping flames the man’s raw-red cheeks showed the twist of fury. “You ever touch her —”

A shadow crossed his firelit face. He quit talking. The gun left Grete’s ribs as Ben’s chunky shape stepped out of the dark. “What’s up?” Ben cried, at once sharply suspicious.

Idaho, squeezing his thin lips together with a final black look, stamped off without answering. Ben, half-turned to peer after him, swung back. “All right,” he snarled. “We got enough of your kind around here. Hit the saddle.”

“Maybe,” Grete said, “you better talk with her, too.”

“Don’t give me your sass!” The man took a threatening step but pulled up when he caught the bared shine of Grete’s teeth. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“From here on in I’m bossing this drive. That clear enough for you?”

The man fell back as though Farraday had struck him. His mouth sprang open as for a mighty yell but nothing came out and Grete, recalling what he’d seen of this fellow, found no cause for revising his estimate. Behind Ben’s brawn, behind the arrogance and bluster, was a soul that packed a fiddle string where a man’s guts ought to be. Grete half-cocked a fist and had all the proof he needed when the man, white-cheeked and shaking, stumbled back with an animal whimper.

Although it made him crawl with disgust and revulsion, Farraday watched until Ben got into blackness too deep to keep track of him. Grete climbed into leather then and, moving back into heavier shadows, cut around to the far side of the fire.

This outfit had a second wagon, visible from here. A kind of combination chuck and supplies wagon, from the back end of which the man by the fire had unpacked Dutch ovens in addition to the skillet and was now busily engaged throwing together a meal. He had a patch over one eye and, although Grete wasn’t able to make out his features, this and a kind of swoop and jerk to the way he moved brought to mind a picture of Stevenson’s Long John Silver.

A man rode in from the dark bulk of horses and flung out of the saddle with a weary man’s grumbling, dropping down by the fire. Grete’s eyes sought and found the window light from Sary’s wagon, saw its gleam blocked out and Ben’s shape briefly limned in the glow from the opened door. Movement pulled Grete’s head around. He watched gaunt Idaho come up and squat down. The cook limped over; and now, with all four of them placed, Grete’s eyes narrowed.

Who the hell was watching those horses!

The girl evidently had more men than he had seen. Even with that stallion it stood to reason they would have at least one man keeping an eye out. That suggested five men in this outfit. Perhaps more.

He kept turning this over in his mind, not liking it. Three competent men could have moved this stock handily. Actually the stud would be doing all the work. Why had the girl brought so large a crew? Out of fear of thieves or because of what had driven them to cross the Jornada?

For the first time Grete wondered if he had bitten off more than he could chew with this outfit.

The girl’s door fanned light and she stepped out, the big Ben trailing her. Grete moved the dun up to the fire and swung down, loosening the cinch a notch and slipping off the bridle so the horse could more comfortably browse. The crew made a business of elaborately ignoring him.

The girl came up with Ben. She said, “You better watch that dun. If he gets near those mares…”

“He won’t.”

She looked dubious, but shrugged. The fellow beside Idaho had got to his feet when she appeared but the gaunt man stolidly continued to hunker on his bootheels, sifting buff dirt through his gunfighter’s fingers. “This —” Sary said, waving a hand at him, “is Idaho. Cook answers to ‘Patch’; the dark-faced one is Frijoles. Boys, meet Grete Farraday.”

The cook, grunting, bent over his ovens. Frijoles managed a frozen-faced nod but Idaho kept right on sifting dirt, his amber-flecked stare never lifting above it. “I’m overcome, too,” Grete said, holding his temper. His thumb jerked at Ben. “What about this fellow — he too important for a common man to know?”

He was ashamed of this churlishness as soon as he’d got the words out; but the girl, chin high, said, “I’m sorry — Ben Hollis,” almost as if it choked her. The name caught at Grete’s notice and he stared, glance narrowing, from one to the other. “Your brother?”

“Brother-in-law.” The chunky man’s toothy grin was smugly compounded of mockery and triumph. “Her husband’s brother,” he proclaimed pontifically, “and as such…”

But Farraday swept the man out of his mind. He was glaring at the girl, feeling cheated and put upon. By withholding the fact of her marriage… He said, grinding down on his anger, “And where would your husband be now, ma’am? If he’s out with those horses —”

“Tate’s dead,” the man’s brother said, leering maliciously. “And so, as head of the family —”

“You own these horses?”

“Not exactly,” the man bridled, “but —”

“You paying this crew?”

Hollis said irritably, “I’ve got —”

“Mister,” Grete said, “you haven’t got nothing but an oversized mouth.”

Hollis’ face blanched. “You can’t —”

“I’ve heard enough out of you,” Farraday growled, and put his look roughly across the rest of them, darkening the cheeks of the chin-strapped Frijoles, forcing the cook’s single eye to swerve aside. Gaunt Idaho got up holding his raw look expressionless and Farraday said, throwing his words at the girl, “It’s about time we got some things out in the open. You better tell them about that proposition you made me.”

“Yes!” Sary said too quickly, almost frantic. “Mr. Farraday knows Arizona. He understands conditions, the people… He’s got a ranch in that country — half of it will be mine and I’m giving him half the horses… the mares, that is, and half their increase.” She met the hard looks defiantly. “That’s the deal. He’s boss of this now. You’ll take your orders from him.”

Silence shut down, a stillness turned ugly with unspoken resentments. Farraday, turning over what the years had taught him, felt the quiet become brittle, stretched insufferably thin. Only his eyes, hard as gun muzzles, held them; and then Idaho, shoving Frijoles out of his path, came in front of him, glowering, with a rattle of rowels. “You got that in writin’?” he said over his shoulder.

Sary sighed. “His word is good.”

“Sure of that, are you?” A sneer curled Idaho’s lips. “It looks like to me you don’t know who your friends are.” With his breath reaching deeper he settled forward a little, the bright burn of his stare grinding into Grete’s temper like the clamp of a wheel-lock. “If this jasper’s Farraday, he’s been trailin’ with the biggest pack of thieves in Arizony!”

Swallowfork he meant, Grete guessed, and saw a great leap of joy drive through the chunky Ben; but Sary took the play away. “Then,” she said coolly, “he won’t mind rubbing elbows with our Texas breed of coyotes. Dish up, Patch, we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

“That’s right,” Grete nodded. “We’ll be pushing on soon as you fellows get out of the nose bags.”

He turned away from the man, suspecting even as he did so that courage and quick-thinking weren’t going to be enough. And he was right. Ben’s gaunt gunfighter had got the stage set and wasn’t minded, with Frijoles and the cook looking on, to be left like a snot-nosed kid with his pants down.

As Farraday wheeled to step over to the fire, Idaho’s right hand slammed for his hip while his left, snaking out, latched onto Grete’s shoulder, spinning him around. In Idaho’s plan this was intended to set Grete up to where, startled and off-balance, he’d make a pass for his gun and catch a slug for his trouble. Grete was way ahead of him.

What actually happened was too fast for eyes to follow. When the gunfighter’s grip seized hold of his shoulder, Grete, shifting balance for the yank he knew would come, anchored the entire hundred and eighty pounds of his weight to one braced boot. Using this for a fulcrum he came around with the force of a catapult.

A flying fist crashed into Idaho’s jaw. The pistol sailed out of his jerked-wide hand. Shocked surprise and momentum carried him into the fire where panic crossed his legs and pitched him yelling down into the dust.