Fiddlefoot (9 page)

Presently, she turned and walked over to the mirror above the washstand and looked at herself.
I make a handsome executioner
, she thought, and the absurdity of it brought a smile to her face. She was, she knew, being too tragic about this; the world wouldn't end however it turned out, and it was time she learned to compromise.

She unbuttoned her drab office dress, stepped out of it, and with a grimace of distaste, hung it in her tiny closet, exchanging it for a plain blue dress starched so stiffly it rustled when she moved it.

Dressed in it, she took down a small hat and, taking a last look in the mirror, let herself out. Carrying her hat, she went down into the lobby, leaving the key at the desk. The usual bunch of lobby loafers eyed her approvingly, and she was aware of this and even enjoyed it. On the boardwalk, she turned left and took the side street toward the river. The boardwalk gave out two doors past the hotel, and as she stepped onto the weed-grown cinder path along the road, she could see the McGarritys' wagon yard ahead, with the single spreading cottonwood above it. Surrounding it was a new slab fence, and the sight of it touched her strangely. Slab was cheap; Moffat's sawmill gave it away for a few cents a hundred feet, and the McGarritys, with seldom a spare dollar, had used it for all their buildings and fence.

The office was on the road, and approaching it Tess heard a hostler in the back lot cursing a horse with passionate profanity. She hoped that it wasn't Jonas or John McGarrity. They were shy enough normally.

She entered the open door of the office and looked around her. Jonas McGarrity was looking out the high scales window in the back wall, his elbows resting on the sill. There was a battered desk in the corner, and John McGarrity, neat as always in his black suit, had his feet on it.

Jonas called out the window then, “Kick him in the belly, Gus.”

At the same moment, John McGarrity caught sight of Tess, and he came crashingly to his feet. Jonas turned now, and seeing Tess, a deep crimson flush mounted to his morose face.

Tess laughed. “Don't mind, boys, I hear that all day.”

Jonas grinned sheepishly. “I guess we're not used to women around, Tess.”

John shoved his chair toward Tess and she sat down. Catching the worried look in his round face, she said impulsively, “I'm not on a dunning job, boys, so don't look so worried.”

John looked at Jonas and laughed. “It's a good thing, Tess. We won't collect on that job yesterday for another two weeks.”

He pulled up a rough deal chair and Jonas folded his long legs to sit on the slab bench against the wall. Tess looked around the office and said, “I wish I had this much room. And scales, too.”

Jonas scratched his head and said, “I don't, ma'am. You'd have all the business.”

They all smiled at this, and Tess's heart sank. How was she going to break the news she must? These men liked her, and she liked them, and there was no way to sugarcoat this pill.

She began, then, at the beginning, telling of her submission of her monthly report to Rhino, and of his calling her in and complimenting her. As the story unfolded, Jonas gave one puzzled, confounded glance at John, and then returned his attention to her. When she finished by relating that Rhino had ordered her to get their price for the whole outfit, John sat utterly still a moment. He rose slowly then, rubbed the back of his neck with the palm of his hand and circled the room.

He came to a stop before her and said quietly. “You know how we're fixed, Tess. We can't buck you.”

“Not her; Rhino,” Jonas amended gloomily.

“Of course,” John said absently. He smiled politely, and Tess felt a twinge of pain. The two brothers stared at each other silently, and Tess knew they wanted to be alone to talk this over. Yet there was something she must say too, and now she murmured, “Then why buck him?”

Jonas frowned. “You mean we ought to sell out to him at his price?”

“Never,” Tess said flatly. “That's what he's depending on. Just forget yourselves for a moment and think of him. I've already chosen an agent in Leadville and written to him, with instructions to advertise our new low rates. What will happen next?”

“Shippers will leave us for you,” John said.

“And we can't handle it,” Tess said. “We haven't the wagons or the teams or the teamsters. It means we'll have to buy a lot of new equipment at a top price.”

“So Rhino does,” John said. “What then?”

“I'm not sure he does,” Tess said slowly. “He's counting on your selling to him. If he has to buy new equipment and then keep losing money on his low rates because you're waiting to jump in with all your equipment, he'll give it up.”

“Are you sure of that, Tess?” John asked soberly.

Tess shook her head in negation. “No. I'm just counting on his greed.”

John looked at Jonas, and Jonas said bitterly, “That don't feed us, Tess—holding on waiting for him to quit.”

“Then hurry him up,” Tess said vehemently. “Quote me a silly figure of a hundred thousand dollars for your equipment. Board up your windows, lock your gate, insure your wagons, and drive your horses into the mountains. Get a job on round-up, or go hunting. Live on beans or deermeat, and don't come back till the snow drives you in.” She smiled wryly. “By that time, our wagons will be wrecked, we'll have a dozen suits for non-delivery of freight on our hands, and I'll be taking up all his time with complaints. Either that, or we'll have new wagons, and our rates will have gone up so high you can cut under us.”

The two brothers looked at each other a long moment, and then John cleared his throat. “Tess, you mind if Jonas and me step out a minute?”

“I'll go,” Tess said, beginning to rise.

John said hurriedly: “No. Please don't. It won't take a minute.”

Tess settled back in her chair, and Jonas followed John out the side door. She could hear an indistinct muttering then, and low serious answers.

Well, I've done it and I feel cleaner
, she thought. This decision had come hard to her, for she was by nature a loyal person, and she knew what she had just done was disloyal to Rhino. He had befriended her after her father's death and given her work, and she had appreciated that. But this that he had ordered her to do had no bearing on that obligation, she felt. She would carry out orders and work as faithfully as she could for him. Would it then be her fault if the McGarritys defeated her, and through her, Rhino, in the end? She didn't think so.

She was wondering, a small doubt still within her, when she heard footsteps outside and turned her head. Frank Chess stepped through the doorway, and when he caught sight of her, he halted.

His swift grin came only fleetingly from behind some deep restlessness in him, and he said reprovingly, “You're in Indian country, Tess.”

Tess could feel the color come into her face, and she said quickly, “It's just business.”

Frank looked curiously at her, and at that moment John and Jonas came in. Tess noticed oddly that a subtle change came into the faces of the brothers as they saw Frank, and she remembered seeing it before on the faces of other men when they saw him. It was as if he touched everyone with a kind of happy-go-lucky friendliness that had a small magic in it. It seemed as if it had never occurred to him that he could not like everybody, and that everybody could not like him, so they did.

Frank said, “I've got those two teams for you, John, and I'll trade any part of them for a buckboard. Have you got a buckboard?”

“How long does it have to hold together?” Jonas asked. “We got a wreck out there, Frank.”

“I'll take it,” Frank said promptly. “I've got to get it to Saber tonight, though. Got a team free you can loan me? I'll have them and four good horses back to you tomorrow.”

“Sure,” John said. He looked at Jonas inquiringly, and then back at Frank. “About those teams, Frank. We won't need them.” And then, as if he did not want his refusal to sound unkind, he added quickly, “We're closing up the yard at the end of the week.”

Tess felt a sobering pride then; they trusted her good faith enough to take her advice. She saw the look of puzzlement on Frank's face, and now Jonas observed, not without bitterness in his voice, “Rhino's decided to retire us.”

Frank glanced quizzically at Tess now, and John said quickly, “No fault of Tess's. She's helped us.”

Jonas walked to the scales window now and called out to a hostler to hitch up the buckboard, and then he came back to Tess. “Our price,” he said to her with a wry solemnity, “is a hundred and fifty thousand. Make it in two checks, please.”

Tess smiled a little, but it really wasn't something to joke about. John came over now and said in a low tone, “If this got out, Tess, it could go rough with you, couldn't it?” When Tess nodded, John said, “Shall I ask Frank to forget it?”

“I'll talk to him,” Tess said, and she rose. Frank had moved over to the scales window and was looking out into the yard. She surprised a bitter, faraway look in his face that stirred her strangely before he realized she was beside him and turned.

“There's no moon, and you aren't asking me,” Tess said quietly, “but I'd like a small ride in your new buckboard, Frank.”

He remembered, she saw; he gave her a slow, quizzical smile and said, “All right, Tess.”

Afterward, the buckboard came, and Jonas helped her up while Frank held the team. She said good-bye soberly to the McGarritys, and Frank put the team in motion, turning down toward the river road.

The dusty road along the river under the cottonwoods was somehow peaceful and deceptively remote from town, and the smooth oily sound of the river's rush beside and below them was almost hypnotic. Tess listened to it, covertly watching Frank, studying him now with a close and critical appraisal. Even with a black eye, whose origin teased her curiosity, he was wholly handsome in a way that was exciting and disturbing to her, and there was a careless, friendly charm about him that was as unconscious to him as his breathing.

She wondered at the present grimness of his face, but she knew that would not last, for there was a deep and irrepressible gaiety of spirit in him that would not be downed, and which touched a fondness deep in herself. She knew of his life, of his bitter quarrels with Rob Custis, and of the wild and reckless and fun-loving way he had about him. Most people, she noticed, openly liked him, but the sober among them held him in a half-derisive affection that she was shrewd enough to understand and discount. They mistrusted their instinct to like him, perhaps remembering the fable of the ant and the grasshopper. But Tess knew that while the industrious ant disapproved of the idle grasshopper, he was nevertheless willing to eat him, and that envy and faded hopes and small disappointments were behind that derision.

Remembering her purpose now, she stirred herself and said quietly, “Have you put everything together about me and the McGarritys, Frank?”

“I'm not supposed to, am I?” he asked slowly.

Tess told him of her errand then, and she found herself wanting desperately to convince him of the rightness of her decision. As she told him of Rhino's design to ruin the McGarritys, a grim smile flicked faintly at the corner of his mouth. When she finished telling him of the McGarritys' decision to take her advice about closing, he was silent a long minute, and she watched him obliquely, waiting.

“That's good advice. What's worrying you?” he asked then. “Me?”

“No, only Rhino's been good to me,” Tess said hesitantly, feeling for the right words. “I feel disloyal to him—a little.”

Frank looked straight ahead as he said, “Would you rather live with that, or with the memory of keeping quiet while he strangled them?”

“With that, if I have to live with either.”

“You shouldn't have to live with either,” Frank said musingly, “but that's what Rhino does to you.” He looked at her now. “Why are you working for him?”

The transition between the two questions was too abrupt for her, and Tess was silent a moment. This was her first hint that someone else had seen Rhino as she did, and she wanted to ask questions. The chance was past, though, and now she answered his other question.

“Loyalty again. He gave me work so I wouldn't have to live on Judge Tavister's charity.”

Frank turned his face full to her now, and there was a look of astonishment there. “Tavister?”

“Yes. Dad was a teamster for Rhino until he was hurt. Then he was driver and handyman for Judge Tavister until he died. Afterward, the Judge asked Rhino to take me in, and he did.”

“But where was I?” Frank demanded.

“Drifting.”

Frank looked sharply at her, and Tess said quietly, “Would you rather I put it another way? I don't like that word, myself.”

“No, that word will do,” Frank said soberly, and he returned his gaze to the road. Tess had a feeling she had trespassed on something she did not understand, and she was speculating on this when Frank asked idly, “Did Carrie like you?”

It was her turn now to be astonished, and now he looked at her with a mocking, friendly curiosity. “I don't think so,” she said then. “If she remembers at all, she'll tell you she didn't like it when I wouldn't take the room she'd arranged for me with a nice family. I wanted to live in the hotel.”

“Why did she want you to take a room?”

Tess shrugged, amused by his curiosity. “The right men would call on me there. I'd be in the right house. After the right amount of courting I would have the right husband.”

“And you didn't want one?”

Tess said, without hesitation: “The husband, yes. The careful waiting, no.” She laughed a little. “I like to sit in the hotel lobby and talk with drummers and hear what's going on over the pass. I like to play poker with Mr. Newhouse and Doc Breathit and Mr. Maas. I like to drink a beer with old John Colby the nights he isn't driving stage. I like to go way up to the dances at the Horn Creek schoolhouse with some homely puncher and get home at dawn. I make a pretty poor lady, I guess.”