Paper Sheriff (9 page)

When he looked up, Callie had her back to him at the stove, her glass in her hand.

“Rustlers in Sutton County,” she repeated. “Do you believe that?”

“No. If I were you, I wouldn't repeat it. That's the way crazy rumors start and it wouldn't look good coming from the wife of the Sheriff.”

Without turning Callie said in a voice that held a quaver of what Reese thought was anger, “Who would I tell it to? I never see anyone.”

“Your family for one.”

Now Callie turned and Reese saw that the color had fled from her face. “Then you shouldn't have told me,” she said angrily.

“You asked what had happened and I told you. Now keep it quiet.” There was an edge of anger in his own voice but he didn't realize it was there until after he'd spoken.

“Yes, master,” Callie said sardonically.

Reese thought wryly then that it had taken them less than ten minutes to get back to the edgy, suspicious and defensive relationship of two weeks ago. And why hadn't she said anything about the Hoad Land & Cattle Company? He sipped at his drink and suddenly found that he didn't want it. What in God's name was the use of their living together when each day they destroyed a little more of each other? But what galled him and shamed him was the realization that he was as much to blame as Callie.

The next morning Callie waited until Reese left for work and then swiftly she changed from her dull dress into a divided skirt, one of Reese's old shirts and riding boots. At the corral Sam obligingly got her horse from the horse pasture and saddled up for her. Afterwards she headed south for her father's spread. It was a sunny morning holding little wind. Every stock tank and every depression still held water from last week's torrential rain. The sleepless night, however, had dulled her sensibilities and she was blind to the sleek cows and their fat calves she saw, even to the newly replenished graze.

To an impartial observer approaching it, Ty Hoad's Hatchet Ranch would have seemed a sorry affair that held an indefinable aura of failure. The buildings were in bad repair and the sod-roofed house and shadeless yard had a hard-scrabble look about them. The ranch with its poor range had changed hands three times in the last ten years. If a man owning it caught an easy winter and a wet spring, he could make out, but normally he fought a hard winter and a dry spring and summer. Afterwards he started looking for a buyer.

The buildings were two single-storey log houses connected by a dog run. They were built of huge cottonwood logs by the original builder who sacrificed the pleasure of shade and greenery to the necessity for shelter. The old stumps still pocked the area between the house and the sagging, jerry-built outbuildings of the corrals. No successor, including Ty, had bothered to plant anything.

Callie dismounted, loosened the cinch of her saddle and, turning her horse into the corral, strode swiftly among the stumps and past the bunkhouse where Ty's two Mexican cowhands bedded down. She even passed the open door to Ty's and Buddy's shack, heading for the spot where she knew she would find her father.

Turning the corner, she saw her father seated on the dirty shuck mattress of the rusted iron bedframe. Here, on the north side of the house, there was always shade. Ty spent a good part of his days there and slept there at night, preferring it to the airless and almost furnitureless cabin.

Ty, dressed in his ill-fitting range clothes, did not look up from mending a bridle as Callie came around the corner, crossed before him and sat down on the bed.

“I saw you coming,” Ty said.

“Pa, we might be in trouble,” Callie said without preliminaries. She spoke so quickly that Ty, after spitting through his already stained moustache, looked up. “Where's Buddy?” Callie said then.

“Him and Orv left early for town yesterday. Ain't seen him since. What trouble?”

Callie told him then of her conversation with Reese last night. They had both been feisty, she said, after Callie demanded to know what had gone on in her absence. He had told her of the trail boss's visit to him, during which he gave Reese his opinion that there were rustlers in Sutton County. Reese, Callie said, didn't think so but he had abjured her to keep silent lest foolish talk get around.

“Reese going to do anything about it?”

“I couldn't ask him any more for fear of seeming too curious, but I don't think so.”

Ty looked off across at the low clay hills, whose now dried out tops trailed faint banners of dust pushed by a persistent though gentle wind.

“If he's not curious, then why you worried, Callie?”

“I don't rightly know, Pa. I'm just uneasy. Shouldn't we move those steers?”

“In a week we will.”

“Shouldn't we warn the boys?” Callie persisted.

Ty snorted and looked pityingly at her. “Orv and his boys and Buddy, but nobody else. Reese was right. Enough people hear stock's been rustled, they'll start wondering where it's hid. Then Reese will start looking, for damn sure.”

Callie stood up. “Pa, let's find Uncle Orv and see what he says.”

“Why, he'll say the same as me,” Ty said testily. “You fool women panic too easy.”

“All right,” Callie said coldly. “If those cattle are found with my brand on them, who's in trouble?” When her father looked at her in astonishment at her tone of voice, she held his glance without faltering.

“You trying to act like a president of a cattle company?”

“Yes,” Callie said flatly. “You and Uncle Orv set me up there and you better protect me.”

Her father sighed and put the bridle down. “All right, Callie. We'll go.”

Together they walked to the corral where Ty cinched up Callie's saddle and saddled his own mount. Watching him Callie knew that she had offended him, but every word she said had been true. If the cattle were discovered, their brands unhealed, it would be she who would be questioned after Reese looked up the brand registration in the company incorporation.

Maybe he wouldn't have to look up either, for although he had never asked her about the Hoad Land & Cattle Company, he might know of its existence. He could be sly, Callie thought resentfully. Then she wondered if he was being sly when he said he didn't think there was any rustling in Sutton County. Was he baiting a trap and did he know more than he pretended? These were questions Uncle Orv could answer better than her father, for he was a shrewder man and, Callie admitted to herself now, more of a man than her father.

As they approached Orville. Hoad's sagging gate, Callie could see Min Hoad seated in one of the veranda chairs and at this distance Callie guessed by her actions that the big, raw-boned, half-breed Ute woman was shelling peas or stripping beans. Ty opened the sagging wire gate and passed Callie through, then, not bothering to mount, led his horse alongside Callie's the fifty yards up to the veranda.

Their greetings were pleasant enough, although Min, while counted a Hoad, was not really one of them. She was a square-faced, pleasantly homely woman who had done an adequate job of raising their children until Orville took them over and shaped them into Hoads. Quiet to tacturnity and shy, she was taken into the family's councils but her opinions were never sought.

Callie liked her and at any other time would have enjoyed chatting with her, but immediately upon dismounting now she said, “Min, is Uncle Orv here?”

“Him and Buddy are asleep in the bunkhouse. They got in a couple of hours ago.”

Callie turned to her father. “Pa, go wake Uncle Orv or I will.”

“If he's sleeping this time of day, he needs to,” Ty protested.

“Will you do it or will I?” Callie challenged.

Grumbling under his breath, Ty headed toward the barn lot and bunkhouse close to a thick cluster of giant cottonwoods while Callie mounted the step to the veranda and took one of the rocking chairs. What did it take to make her father see the danger they were in, she wonderd half in anger. Maybe Orville could impress him. Or was it as her father said, she was a panicky woman? Min, who had never started a conversation in anyone's memory, was not starting one now and Callie was thankful.

When Ty and Orville appeared, they came through the house. Orville stepped through the doorway, a half-full pitcher of moonshine dangling from his hand. His pale hair was awry and he was shirtless. He had hauled on a pair of pants held up by suspenders over his long underwear and since he didn't speak to Callie or look at her as he crossed before her to a chair, she guessed that he was in a bad mood. Orville slacked into the chair with a groan he did not try to suppress. Then, before he spoke, he lifted the pitcher and drank not from its spout but from its rim. While he was drinking Ty came over and took the chair beside him.

When Orville caught his breath, he looked harshly at Callie. “I God, girl, you aim to kill me?”

“No, Uncle Orv, but I didn't think this could wait.”

“Ty's already told me what you come for. Is that all Reese told you? That this trail boss figured there was rustlers in Sutton County?”

Callie nodded. “I couldn't ask him more, could I? He'd think it was funny if I did. I never ask about the sheriffing business, so why should I now?” Only when she finished speaking did Callie realize how shrill her voice had been.

“He never said anything about what made this R-Cross rider suspicious?”

“Pa told you what Reese said. I asked him if he thought there were rustlers in Sutton County and he said no. Then he told me to keep my mouth shut about this. He didn't want rumors starting up.”

“Now why wouldn't he?” Orv asked softly.

“That's one of the things I wanted to ask you.”

“You figure this R-Cross rider told him things he wants to check out on the quiet before a lot of talk messes it up?”

“Do you?” Callie countered.

Orville leaned back in his chair and scratched under his armpit. “The only other reason he'd tell you to keep quiet is because he don't want to spend a lot of time looking for proof of rustling. I don't reckon that'd be the reason because Reese ain't a lazy man.”

“So you think he might be investigating on the quiet?” Callie asked.

“If I knew what that trail boss told him, I could answer you. I just don't know, Callie.”

“Shouldn't we move the cattle, Uncle Orv?”

“When the brands are healed,” Orville said. Now he took another drink of whisky and passed the pitcher to Ty, who shook his head in refusal. Orville cradled the pitcher in his lap between his big hands and continued. “I sent June and Emmett up to Big John this morning.” Now he glanced at his wife. “Them boys have enough Injun in them to find out if there's any strangers hanging around that Copper Canyon country.”

“Is that all we can do—just wait?”

“There's nothing else to do, unless you can get it out of Reese without him knowing it what this R-Cross rider told him.”

Ty spoke up now. “Don't try it, Callie. Reese is smart. If he suspicioned us, we got trouble.”

Orville swivelled his head to look at him. “If he don't find the cows, Ty, we ain't in real bad trouble.”

“How so?”

Orville looked at Callie now. “That R-Cross rider ain't going to complain any more. He just won't be around again.”

“You can be sure of that?” Callie asked.

“Buddy and we made sure,” Orville said.

For a moment Callie didn't understand. “You mean you scared him off?”

“Well, you could call it that,” Orville said judiciously. “He won't be a witness to anything. He's at the bottom of a mine shaft.”

“You're holding him?” Callie asked.

Orville shook his head. “Buddy and me ain't. The mine shaft is.”

Only then did Callie begin to comprehend. “He's dead.”

Quietly then Orville told of seeing the R-Cross branded bay in front of the Best Bet and of talking with Will Reston about R-Cross strays he'd seen. On the road to find them he told of trying to learn what Reston had told Reese and when Reston told him that he was going back to the Little Muddy to get an R-Cross rider who could identify one of the rustlers, Orville knew he had to act. He simply shot Reston, disposed of the body and he and Buddy had ridden over to the Little Muddy looking for the injured man's camp. It wasn't there and had never existed. Reston had lied and had died for his lie. What he did not tell Callie was that he and Buddy couldn't find Reston's horse.

Callie heard him out with a strange calm and was not surprised at her own lack of revulsion or feeling of guilt. After all, had she ever really believed her Uncle Orville innocent of Flowers' death, even though she pretended to Reese she had believed so? And why had she agreed to head the Hoad Land & Cattle Company if she had not believed that her Uncle Orville was strong, a man of decision even if that decision meant violence? This, she had been taught, was the way a strong man should live, taking what he could, fighting for it and doing what was necessary to attain it and hold it. How else could any of the Hoads lift themselves out of this hard-scrabble existence unless they fought? The death of Will Reston was only part of that fight. If it was hard and cruel, that was all right too. Wasn't she on the receiving end of Reese's hardness and cruelty? In this last year she had come to believe that this was the way life was—unfair, mean and unrelenting. No, either it seized you by the throat or you seized it.

Now she felt herself relax for the first time since Reese had told her of the trail boss's visit. Uncle Orville was right. His boys could guard the camp, the trail boss was out of the way. If the man had told Reese that one of his riders could identify one of the rustlers, then Reese would wait for him in vain. If he hadn't told him that, then perhaps it was true that Reese really believed that there was no gang of rustlers in Sutton County.

Now Callie looked at her father to see how he had received the news of Reston's disposal. His round face held a lingering look of surprise and mild shock as if this news was something he hadn't bargained for. It held something else too that filled Callie with quiet elation: it was a look of resignation. Once more, it seemed to say, the Hoads had closed ranks.