Fiddlefoot (6 page)

Tess regarded him coldly, not moving, and presently she turned and went down the corridor and stepped into Rhino's office.

Rhino was standing at the open window; he was so tall he had to stoop to see out. Now he turned and looked at her and nodded toward the lot. “That happen often?”

“Often enough, but I can handle it,” Tess said.

“There'll be no more of that,” Rhino observed grimly. “Sit down, please.”

Tess settled into the chair pulled up beside his desk, and folded her hands on the lap of her drab office dress. She noted without interest that the sleeves of her dress were getting shiny and that her fingers were ink-stained.

Rhino sat down heavily in his oversize swivel chair and laid a massive hand on top of some papers on his desk. “I've finished these,” he said pleasantly, and he frowned a little. “Are you sure your figures are right?”

Tess smiled a little. “The money's in the bank, Mr. Hulst.”

“I can't believe it,” Rhino said slowly. “Frankly, when I gave over the freighting end to you, I'd have been satisfied if you'd paid your salary out of it. The thing was a nuisance.”

“A money-making nuisance.”

“How've you done it?” Rhino asked in his kindly voice. “What's happened to the McGarrity boys? You've taken a nick out of their business, haven't you?”

“No, we can each do one thing best, and we do it,” Tess replied. “We can haul freight downriver at a rate they can't touch, and they won't even try. But from Leadville over to here, we can't buck them. We each go our own way.”

Rhino's eyes sharpened. “Why can we beat them downriver, but not upriver?”

“We're hauling feed for the lot in from downriver all the time,” Tess said. “The wagons used to go down empty. Now I load them with freight, so we're full coming and going, and can offer a lower rate. The McGarritys' wagons have to come back empty, and it doesn't pay them.”

Rhino smiled and nodded appreciatively. “What about upriver?”

Tess shook her head. “The McGarritys have us there. They've got good wagons and good teamsters, and they keep a schedule.”

“And we haven't?”

Tess laughed. “Bill's a sample of the teamsters Hugh gives me. Anybody half drunk or sick or who can't do a day's work is a teamster. For wagons we use anything lying around the lot. For teams we've been using half-wild range horses that we want broken for harness.” She shrugged now. “As for a schedule, we couldn't keep one at the point of a gun.”

Rhino put back his head and laughed, and Tess smiled too. She had never complained of her tools before, and now that the opportunity had come she wondered if it would do any good. She was a woman in a man's world, she knew, yet Rhino seemed interested enough.

He said now, “What do you need?”

“Sound freight wagons,” Tess said promptly. “Real working-teamsters, not saloon bums. Good teams broken to harness.”

“Think you could run the McGarritys up a tree, then?”

“I wouldn't try.”

Rhino frowned, puzzled, and Tess leaned forward a little. “Look, Mr. Hulst. Plenty of freight outfits in Denver City and Leadville book freight on through to points in Utah and even Salt Lake, don't they?”

Rhino nodded.

“Well, the McGarritys have an agent in Leadville. Let him book freight on through to Utah too. The McGarritys can haul it this far and transfer to our wagons. We can haul it to the Utah points and still bring back all our feed. With our low rates tacked onto the McGarritys' rates, we could haul cheaper than other outfits and both of us would make more money than we do now.”

Rhino scowled and half-swung his chair around to look out the window. His big hands lay on his massive thighs, and a thick third finger tapped regularly on his frayed trousers. Tess wondered again at the worn clothes Rhino affected, and guessed shrewdly that a horse-trader, which Rhino had once been, could never afford to seem too prosperous. Rhino scrubbed his chin thoughtfully and turned to regard her. “A sound idea,” he murmured, “but why make money for the McGarritys? Why don't we do it all?”

“They've got the good equipment. We can't buck them without spending a lot of money.”

Rhino pursed his lips doubtfully. “What would happen if we hauled freight from Leadville to points in Utah for ninety cents a hundred?”

“You'd lose money.”

“But I'd get the business. What else would happen, though? Would the McGarrity boys match that rate?”

“They couldn't, and stay in business,” Tess said.

“Exactly,” Rhino murmured. He laced his fingers behind his head and stared benevolently at the ceiling. “I've made some money this summer I'd like to gamble with,” he said, and now he looked sharply at her. “Do you think the McGarritys have money behind them—or could get it?”

Tess frowned. “No. They've got where they are by hard work and little money.”

Rhino smiled. “What would happen then if I threw away a few thousand dollars by cutting rates until they couldn't meet them?”

“You'd ruin them,” Tess said quietly.

Rhino detected the censure in her words, and he raised his eyebrows. “And if I do?”

“I like them,” Tess said simply. “They're good men.”

Rhino chuckled. “It's your privilege to like them—after working hours.”

Tess was silent, appalled by what was shaping up. She said now in a quick and curious voice, “You mean you'd break them to make money, Mr. Hulst?”

Rhino smiled, and nodded. “I'll throw away up to ten thousand cutting rates. By that time, they'll be out of business and we can pick up their wagons cheap, maybe the whole outfit. After that, I can hoist rates and make back my ten thousand.”

Tess sat utterly motionless now. She was remembering Jonas McGarrity, that big, loose-framed, gangling man who had spent a score of nights telling her of his deep ambitions, watching her to see if he stirred affection or love in her, and finally being content with her friendship. He was a good man, simple and kind and tolerant, and all his homely hopes along with his brother's were doomed now by Rhino's greed. It was the heartlessness of Rhino's plan that frightened her. If a man with a few thousand dollars in the bank could drive two other men to ruin, something was wrong. It was as if she had glimpsed something black and slimy and nameless that she was not meant to look upon, and she turned away from it instinctively.

“Well?” Rhino said. “What's wrong with that idea?”

“What do I do about it?” Tess asked reluctantly. She would not look at him; she kept pleating the folds of her drab skirt.

“Go see the McGarritys. Tell them what we're going to do. Unless they're fools, they'll see they're licked. Get their offer on the whole outfit and bring it to me, and we'll see how it looks.”

Tess stood up, looking at a point beyond Rhino's head. “Isn't that a job for a man?” she asked woodenly.

Rhino shook his head. “You, my dear, are running the freighting end. I supply only the money and advice.”

Tess said good night and went back to her desk. Shinner had shoved his books in the safe, and now he bade her a precise good evening as he went out. Tess sat down slowly at her desk and stared at the dingy wall opposite. There was a price on everything, she thought bitterly, and this was the price on her job, that she must ruin the McGarritys. She remembered now that the McGarritys yesterday had come in to rent four teams for a special hauling job of mine machinery to Meeker, the mining camp back in the mountains. They would be home tomorrow, and tomorrow night, she knew, she would have to face them.

She heard someone mounting the steps and turned to see Hugh Nunnally tramp in, heading for Rhino's office. He grinned lazily and said, “You've had enough for today, Tess. Go home.”

“On my way,” Tess said.

Hugh went on through to the office and Tess stared at the corridor doorway. It seemed to her now that it wasn't just a plain doorway in a shabby, ill-lit office any more but an entrance to a dark cave where a cunning old man wove his secret schemes and laughed at pity.

She rose now and swiftly cleared her desk, and she could barely control the impulse to get out of here and as far away as her legs would take her. She had just twenty-four hours to get used to the idea of being a partner in a crime.
I'll think of a way around it
, she thought then, and she wondered desperately if she could.

Chapter 6

The holding corral Frank elected to work out from lay on the upper Elk among the aspens, Saber's highest range. Here, the Elk broke out of a steep-walled canyon into a flat hay meadow, and a high fence of peeling aspen poles stretched across the canyon's mouth.

Two hours before dusk the dozen horses inside the corral lifted their ears alertly and looked out toward the meadow. Twenty-odd horses broke out of the aspens now into the meadow, loping for the creek.

Frank reined in at the edge of the timber, letting the band he had been driving seek water. Looking over the near peaks to the east, he saw a long flat slate-covered cloud drifting mares' tails of rain onto the boulder fields to the north. If rain came, it would be after dark, and he had a good hour of working light.

His camp lay under three stunted pines along the stream; passing it now he saw the tarp covering his gear pooled with water from the rain that had soaked him that afternoon.

At the corral, he herded the dozen horses already inside back into the canyon, and stretched a pair of ropes from one side of the canyon across to the other to hold them there.

Leaving the corral gate open now, he mounted and swung in a wide half-circle around the twenty new horses he had been driving, and came up behind them. They moved docilely into the corral and Frank closed the gate.

On this, his second evening out of Saber, he still moved with a stiff weariness as he off-saddled and turned his horse loose to graze. Back in camp, he built up a fire, filled a coffeepot from the creek and set it to boil. Afterward, he rummaged around and found a cold biscuit to chew on, then took up his rope and headed back for the corral. His step was slow; a grinding weariness was on him, and the day's riding which had begun before sunup had been a minor torture. His ribs were so sore that even breathing was an effort, and every movement this day had reminded him of the welcome he had received at the hands of Saber's crew.

Inside the corral, he stubbornly set about the wearisome job of cutting out his own horses from the general bunch and pushing them back into the rope corral with the others. It had taken him two days of hard work to round up and cut out a third of his own string—a job that, with another man, would have been a bare day's job.

At deep dusk, he was finished. He turned out the unwanted horses, and looked briefly at the eighteen he had kept. Even now, he had no certain idea why he was doing this, except that these horses represented his fortune and his future, and he must use them.

Back at camp he made a quick supper of bacon and biscuits and coffee, and afterward sat back on his tarp, his back against a tree, and watched evening come to the meadows. Tomorrow, he would take this bunch down to the home ranch, and return for the rest, and this week would find his bunch together. Afterward, he must tell Carrie of his decision to give up Saber, and he wondered what she would say.

He was pondering this when he saw the rider come out of the aspens and head across the meadow for his camp. It took him a few moments to identify the spare, sinewy figure of old Cass Hardesty, and he felt the caution gather in him, remembering Cass's part in the fight.

Cass crossed the creek, his horse kicking up ribbons of water that the dusk turned to pure silver as they rose and fell. Cass was one of the oldest Saber hands, a dour and taciturn man who, for all his surliness, had been kind enough to Frank in the past. The short pipe that barely cleared his heavy black mustaches and which was removed from his mouth only when he ate and slept, jutted straight out from his heavy jaw.

He reined in by the fire, and Frank, as custom dictated, said, “Light and eat, Cass,” in no friendly voice.

“Sure you want me?” He was embarrassed, Frank saw.

At Frank's nod, Cass stepped out of the saddle and looked about him. His glance settled on the corral with its eighteen horses, and he looked over at Frank. “That's a man-killin' job. Why didn't you ask Jess for the loan of a couple of hands?”

“I guess you know.”

“Yeah,” Cass said slowly. “Like you said, Johnny talks too much.” He reflected a moment and added, “We all should of waited.”

Frank tossed him a cup and Cass, squatting before the fire, poured himself some coffee. Removing his pipe, he drank deeply of the scalding coffee and then exhaled and looked over at Frank.

“You're passin' up a pretty good thing in Saber—if you are passin' it up.”

“I am,” Frank said.

Cass drank the rest of the coffee and with a spare, thoughtful movement, he put his pipe back in his mouth. “Who killed him?” he asked abruptly.

“Take your choice.”

Cass almost smiled then. “I wouldn't pick you,” he said mildly. “Not even after the namin' Rob gave you.”

Frank didn't comment. Now Cass reached into the edge of the fire, picked up a coal, and placed it in the bowl of his pipe, puffing the tobacco alight. Decades of blacksmithing had given Cass calluses on his big hands that had turned his skin into a black and leathery rind, impervious to heat. When he had his light, he tossed the coal back into the fire and observed dryly, “If there was a bastard in the bunkhouse that night, I'd say it was Rob, not you.”

“So would I,” Frank said woodenly.

“When you didn't kill Rob that night, I figured you never would,” Cass said. “That's why Hannan's wrong when he suspects you.”

“How'd you know he does?”