Fiddlefoot (12 page)

The Judge gave Rhino another of his spare, non-committal smiles, and Rhino observed, in a suitably solemn voice, “I'm sorry he had to come home to Rob's death, though.”

“That was unfortunate,” Judge Tavister agreed.

Rhino frowned, and then asked in a polite but confidential manner, “Does Frank seem moody to you, Judge?”

Judge Tavister studied his desk a moment and then remarked dryly, “Yes, I can't quite blame him, though, considering the track Hannan has taken.”

“A damned blunder,” Rhino growled. “Hannan's a fool, and a clumsy one to boot. He's been annoying me, too, since Frank worked for me.”

“Just what is he after? Hannan, I mean.”

“Frank can't account for his whereabouts five days in July. Hannan seems to think Rob was killed then.” Rhino snorted vastly. “I've had to send out for the man Frank was with to prove where he was.”

“Let's hope your man has a better memory than Frank,” Judge Tavister remarked. Rhino, upon reflection, thought that statement rather odd. It was time, however, for business, and now he asked, “Judge, you're handling Frank's affairs, aren't you?”

“I'm Rob's executor, if that's what you mean.”

Rhino nodded. “Just how serious is Frank about wanting a partner?”

There was a five-second silence, while Judge Tavister regarded him closely. “A partner,” the Judge said in a musing voice. “I didn't know he wanted one.”

Rhino's thick black eyebrows raised slowly, slowly settled. “Then maybe I'm speaking out of turn.”

The Judge said dryly, “Out of turn or not, I wish you'd speak. As his lawyer, I'd say I was privileged.”

“All right. He came down to the lot the other night, talked with the boys awhile, and then drifted into my office. We talked about a lot of things, and finally Frank asked me how I'd like to go in partnership with him. Just like that.”

“What did you tell him?”

Rhino spread his big hands expressively. “Why, I didn't know just what to say. I know what I think, though. I'm a horse-dealer working out of a two-by-four lot. If I hold a horse for two weeks, he's eaten up my profit. With a place to hold horses and grass to feed them, I could make money. And that's what Frank offered.”

“Saber, you mean.”

“Yes, I was to supply the cash. Frank would buy horses and supply the graze. I'd sell them.” Rhino smiled almost wistfully. “For a horse-dealer, that's heaven.”

Judge Tavister looked at a pigeonhole in his desk for a full minute, then he asked, “What's worrying you, Rhino?”

“Is he serious?”

“If he is, it'll be the first time he ever has been,” Judge Tavister said tartly. He glanced at Rhino then and smiled apologetically. “I'm hard on him, perhaps. Still, just to give you a sample of what I'm up against with him, the last thing he said to me was to put Saber away for him. He didn't want it.”

Rhino shook his big head wonderingly, and was silent.

Judge Tavister closed his eyes and rubbed them with thumb and forefinger of his thin hand, and then he made a wry grimace and shook his head sharply. “He's not steady.”

“He worked well for me,” Rhino said stoutly. “He's the sharpest horse-buyer I know.”

Judge Tavister shrugged. “Maybe you can handle him.”

“He doesn't need handling.”

“I didn't mean that, exactly. I meant, maybe you're the partner for him.”

That was what Rhino was waiting to hear, but he only looked pleasantly baffled.

Judge Tavister said thoughtfully, “You've got a good thing in that horse lot, haven't you, Rhino?”

This was no time for mock modesty, Rhino knew; he nodded and said, “Have had, for twenty years.”

Judge Tavister stood up now, and Rhino rose too. “I'll talk with Frank,” the Judge said.

They shook hands and Rhino went out. On the stairs he paused to light up a cigar, and he was smiling gently. The news that Frank was taking a partner, when it came, would be no surprise now. The Judge even thought he would be a steadying influence on Frank, Rhino struck a match and held it to his cigar, but the irony of this last was so perfect that he began to chuckle softly, and the chuckle blew out the match.

Chapter 11

Bellied down In the loose caprock which still held the heat of the desert day, Frank regarded the activity below him, and he did not like what he saw. Rhino's crew had chosen this meager meadow astride the road in the angle of a shallow dogleg canyon for their last camp before Crawford, and the first smoke of their fire was lifting into the deepening dusk of the canyon. Frank noted that Pete Faraday had made camp at the lower end of the meadow close to the wagon road, where the canyon walls crowded close together. Fort Crawford lay only twenty-odd miles to the south on the Ute Reservation, and there was enough Indian in Pete to recognize that his loose band of forty-odd horses, however well guarded, was a tempting prize for any prowling Ute. Accordingly, he had blocked the exit to the canyon in the best way he could—which put him almost astride the road over which Frank's string must be driven tonight.

In the lowering dusk, Frank tried to identify at this distance the two men with Pete, and he recognized only Albie Beecham, a slight and wiry puncher so wickedly truculent that Rhino kept him away from towns as much as possible. The other man who, from horseback, was now passively watching the horses roll in the sparse grass, he did not know.

Frank watched a few minutes longer, and pulled back from the caprock until the rim was between him and the camp, and then he rose and started back toward his horse ground-haltered a hundred yards back on a sage thicket. If he was to beat Rhino's bunch to Crawford, the choice was plain enough; he could boldly drive his string past Pete's camp tonight, trusting to the hour and the darkness to hide the brands and the identity of his crew. That was leaving much to chance, though, for Pete Faraday would be wary. For while Rhino was always favored by the Fort Crawford quartermaster, Lieutenant Ehret, with information about when mounts would be required, there was no assurance that other horse-dealers had not procured the same information. And Pete Faraday, seeing forty horses pass him in the night headed for Crawford, might logically think another dealer was pushing in ahead of him, and there would be trouble. The other choice, of course, was to break through.

Frank found his horse and mounted and turned back along the flinty, sunblasted road, already knowing what would have to be done. This desert canyon country along the edge of the Gunnison Gorge a mile to the west was laced by steep-walled, boulder-strewn washes, and there was no other way through it. An anger almost pleasant stirred in Frank now. For two nights and two days he had pushed his string ceaselessly down out of the mountains, away from the Grand River, and into the desert, using every hour of daylight and crowding every mile he could into the day's drive, and increasingly the uselessness of his errand had been brought home to him. Only a cross-grained obstinacy, sweat into him by this desert, had prevented him from turning back, since in another week none of this would matter anyhow. And now this whim of Pete Faraday's in placing his camp had brought the crisis, and grimly, Frank welcomed it.

It was full dark when he came to the wide wash slanting down to the Gunnison where the string was lined out against a cutbank, indistinct in the darkness. In midafternoon, Frank had stopped the string here, and while the sweating crew took the horses down to water in the Gunnison, let them roll in the warm sand, and grained them, he had patiently observed Rhino's crew and waited for them to camp. Following his instructions, his crew had made no fire, and now the string, halted and harnessed again, was ready to travel. Cass, Red, Johnny, and Ray Shields were sprawled out on the bank, the coals of their cigarettes a dim beacon to him as he rode up and dismounted.

Briefly, then, he described the canyon and the location of Faraday's camp, and as he talked he wished there were a fire so he could see the faces of these men. There was nothing in their bargain that called for this, and the chill inference in his words would not escape them. They were silent when he finished, and it was Johnny Samuels who spoke first.

“You figure to sneak by 'em, Frank?”

Cass snorted around his pipe. “You been listenin' to forty horses for two days, Johnny. You think they wouldn't wake you up?” Cass's voice was rough and husky; as the wheel rider, he had been in a constant pall of dust for two days now, and his throat was raw.

It remained for Red Thornton to sum it up. “Hell, we got to ram through.”

Frank remained out of the discussion until Ray Shields spoke, and then he knew they had accepted this as necessary. He tramped back to the buckboard, and brought out the lantern and lighted it, and afterward they squatted around it and planned their moves, Frank drawing a rough map in the dirt to guide them. There was no use trying to make an approach by stealth, they agreed. Better to hang the lantern on the collar of Johnny's lead horse, so that, rounding the dog-leg in the canyon, their coming would be announced plainly. Frank and Ray Shields, under cover of the racket kicked up by the string, would follow them, but at the dog-leg they would drift out into the meadow under cover of darkness. There would be a night-herder guarding Rhino's horses, of course, and both he and his horses would be alerted by the lantern. Once the dog-leg had been rounded, the string would be halted until Frank and Ray were above the herd. Then they would stampede Rhino's horses toward the camp and the canyon exit. The string would pull in at the tail end of the stampede at a dead run, trusting to the confusion to break through. Frank and Ray would swing in behind them, keeping Rhino's crew away from the string. If the stampede were effective, Pete Faraday would spend at least tomorrow beating the hot canyons running to the Gunnison, for his horses.

Frank borrowed Cass's gun and shell belt, for Hannan still had his, and while Cass and Red and Johnny mounted, he hung the lantern on the lead ring.

The string pulled out of the wash, past him, onto the road, and afterward he mounted, falling in beside Ray tailing the buckboard. There was, he knew, the chance of failure in this plan. If things went wrong, he was risking injury to his string and a wicked fight with an angry, hard-case crew. Once he recognized that, he settled into forced patience. His lips were dry and cracked, and he felt a grinding, burnt-out weariness as he pulled up his neckerchief over the lower half of his face against the dust.

Later, when the slope into the canyon began, and the teams lifted into a trot so that Cass had to brake the buckboard with his rope, he knew there was no turning back now. He peered ahead past the distant lantern, trying to see through the dust. The deep black was unbroken.

The road began to level out now and Frank knew the dog-leg was almost here. He leaned out and touched Ray Shields' arms, and then spurred his horse, moving up past Cass, Ray behind him.

Now Johnny, holding the lead team wide, swung around the turn of the dog-leg, and the lantern was gone from sight. Red began to curse, holding his team to the outside of the curve, too, reining back to keep the line taut. Over the backs of the teams as they took the turn, now, Frank saw the flickering campfire at the far end of the canyon, and now he put his attention on the meadow. He moved out toward it, keeping to the canyon wall on the left and its black shadows. He and Ray rode slowly, and as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he made out Rhino's horses standing, motionless, probably watching the distant lantern.

Then the form of the night-herder, his horse pointed toward the lantern, was silhouetted against the far fire. Frank glanced to his right and saw the string's lantern cease movement, and in the same moment the night-herder moved his horse slowly toward it.

Frank knew then that this was the time to move, that the night-herder must get no nearer the string.

He pulled back and around, giving Ray's horse a slap across the rump with his hat as he passed, and then, heading directly for the herd of horses, he lifted his horse into a run, pulled his gun and mouthed a wild rebel yell. His shot and Ray's came almost together, and Ray let out a piercing whistle that cut the night like a knife.

Rhino's nearest horses, already made uneasy by the mysterious light on the road, panicked away from the sudden shouts and shots and yells, and it was only a matter of seconds before the fright of the few was communicated to the many. There was only one way they could run, and that was away from the noise and toward the fire, and as they grouped together for company, Frank could hear the mounting rumble of their hooves hammering the rocky ground as they fled. Glancing over to the string, now, he saw the lantern arc out into the night and snuff out, and he knew that Johnny had doused it before the string started to move again.

Behind him and to the side now he heard a wild cursing. The night-herder, caught between two choices, had waited too late to quiet the horses and they were away from him. Now he shot, and Frank saw in the man's hesitation that he had read this aright. He was heading for the string, shooting at it.

Frank swerved his horse sharply, riding now to head off the night-herder, who was angling across the meadow toward the string, invisible now in the night. His course, Frank saw, would converge soon with his own, and he held his fire, knowing his own location was undetected.

He stole a glance over his shoulder now, and saw that the two men at the fire had not mounted, and he knew their horses had been turned out with the bunch and they were afoot. They were standing in front of the fire now, waving blankets, trying to turn the oncoming stampede, and then he saw them dive for the shelter of the canyon wall as the wave of rampaging, terror-filled horses hit the camp. He saw the fire killed in an explosion of sparks, and then he turned his head to pick up the night-rider.

At that very instant he was aware that he had overshot. He heard the night-rider's horse upon him and then something slammed into his sorrel with the force of an avalanche. He felt his horse falling, and he kicked free of the stirrups before he was hurled into the air. He landed heavily on his shoulder, while to the side of him he heard his horse crash to the ground. And mingled with this was the sound of a mighty weight falling on his horse, driving the breath from him in a great growling, grunting squeal.