Feud On The Mesa (12 page)

“Yes.”

“Do they own this mesa, ma’am?”

“No. I own it. But they control it now because…well, there are five of them, and they are men, and, even when I’ve gone down to Clearwater to hire rid-ers, they never show up, or else they get chased off.” The gun barrel tilted a little more toward the ground. She studied Rufe a moment before saying: “The man
who shot that bay horse from under you, mister, is named Charley Fenwick. I know them all by sight, from far out.” Elisabeth turned and pointed with the rifle. “Those are bullet holes fired into the barn by Chase’s men. I’ve got them in every building, even over in the house walls. But they come in very fast, just ahead of sunlight, or right after dark, usually when I’m choring.” She grounded the rifle and leaned on it. “I wear a six-gun, but I can’t work with a rifle in one hand, can I?”

Rufe sighed and slowly turned to look more closely at the buildings. Jud fished out a tobacco sack and went slowly to work making a cigarette, his bronzed features locked down in a clear expression of anger. As he was lighting up, Rufe said: “What’s your name, lady?”

“Elisabeth Cane. This is Cane’s Mesa. My father settled it. He’s buried yonder, inside that little iron fence. So is my mother.”

Rufe glanced at the corral behind Elisabeth where about fifteen old cows with rough-looking, under-nourished runty little calves waited uneasily. The smoke was still rising from a stone ring where three branding irons were heating.

“You do all this yourself?” asked Rufe.

Elisabeth’s answer was almost curt: “Do all what? Brand about a dozen sickly calves, all that’s left of my bunch?”

Rufe accepted the rebuke. “Yeah, I guess you could do it.” He looked at Jud, who looked darkly back, then Rufe said: “Miz Cane, I can’t go far on foot, and Jud’s animal is tired, and we’re both in need of work, so….”

“I don’t want you on the ranch,” Elisabeth said
firmly “There’s not enough room inside the fence for two more graves.”

“Now, lady,” stated Jud, “I don’t figure to try and squeeze inside that little fence, but for folks to go around shooting other folks’ horses out from under them…you can hire us on, or we’ll set us up a camp around here somewhere in among the trees, but either way someone’s going to settle up for my part-ner’s horse.” Jud jutted his square jaw. “Is that the bunkhouse?”

Elisabeth did not turn in the direction Jud was looking. She simply said: “They will either run you off, or kill you.”

Jud’s answer was direct: “They haven’t run you off nor killed you, lady.”

Elisabeth had no answer, apparently, because she offered none as Jud stepped back to scoop up the reins of his horse and turn in the direction of the barn’s big rear opening. To Rufe, who still stood there, she said: “You see those cattle? That’s all I have left, and they shot my bull a week back, which means that next year even those old cows won’t be coming in with calves at their sides…I can no longer pay riders, Mister Miller. There’s just no money.”

Rufe said: “Shot your bull?”

Elisabeth pointed. “Up there, about four miles to-ward the mountains, there is a deep arroyo. He’s down in there, shot between the eyes.”

Rufe stood a while gazing out and around, then he finally said: “Well, I might as well go back and fetch in my outfit. And if you’ve got some tools, I’d like to bury my horse. He sure was a good friend Tome, ma’am.”

She took him to the barn where Jud had already
off-saddled and was standing up front, leaning in the opening, smoking thoughtfully and gazing out over the great sweep of grass country. Jud strolled back to watch Elisabeth take down two shovels and hand one to Rufe. Jud watched her standing there, holding the other shovel, eyes widening.

He said: “You figure to go help Rufe bury his horse?”

She turned on Jud. “I figured to, because I didn’t figure
you
would.”

Jud stepped on his smoke and ground it out, then raised his eyes to her handsome face, and held out a hand, trying to smile. “I guess I did something wrong. I’m sorry. I don’t want you for an enemy. By the way, where did you leave that old buffalo rifle?”

She handed him the shovel without giving any indication that she knew she was being subtly teased. “Put your nose where it shouldn’t be, Mister Hudson, and you’ll find where I leave that buffalo gun…I’ll feed the critters, go make something for us to eat, and afterward we can work those calves. But you’re wasting your time. I have no money, and Arlen Chase will either hire you away or run you out of the country.” She turned and walked out of the barn toward the golden-lit yard, leaving two stalwart, faded men looking after her.

They went out and began digging. Rufe’s little bay horse had been pigeon-toed, and mule-nosed, and slanty-eyed, and as dependable as springtime grass, but he also weighed just a shade over 1,000 pounds and was built like a stone wall, and, if the ground hadn’t been warmly moldy, digging his grave would have been impossible without a stout team, a good set of chain harness, and a Fresno scraper. In fact, they did not finish it until that night,
because they had to go eat when Elisabeth rang the bell, and, after eating, they had to rope and snub and overhaul those little shaggy calves.

They finished the grave by moonlight, rolled the bay horse in, and bleakly went to work putting all that earth back into the hole. They were almost finished when Elisabeth came out with two huge old crockery cups of black coffee, and, when they leaned on their shovels to express gratitude and drink, the coffee turned out to be laced strongly with whiskey.

Jud smiled for the first time all day, but he kept his thoughts to himself. So did Rufe. He thanked her, and considered her in the ghostly moonlight and star shine as something a man might conjure up in a dream sometime, as a sort of ideal woman, but he said nothing until she looked down at their work, and said: “My father told me one time that a man who would shoot an honest horse was not one bit better than a murderer.”

Jud finished the coffee, passed back the cup, wiped his mouth on the back of a soiled shirt sleeve, and turned back to work. “Your father was absolutely right, ma’am. What did you say that man’s name was?”

“The one who shot the horse? Charley Fenwick. He rode for me last year, for about three weeks, then he disappeared, and the next I knew, he was riding for Arlen Chase.”

“And shooting folks’ horses,” added Jud, leaning into his work. “Tell us about this Mister Chase, ma’am.”

She told them all she knew, which actually was not very much, because excepting that first time Chase had ridden into the yard to announce that he was moving in, and she had drawn on him, they
had not met again face to face more than three or four times, and those other times he had taunted her but had not lingered after doing it. She told them how her cattle had dwindled from 300 head down to what was in the corral, and how the best of her horses had just simply disappeared. She said: “I mentioned this to a pair of cowmen down near Clearwater…older men who had known my father, and they said likely some Indians passing through up along the north-ward mountains had taken the horses. It’s possible. One thing I know, Chase’s men don’t ride Arrowhead horses, and I brand foals as soon as I can catch their mothers.”

“That’s probably why they don’t ride them,” Jud suggested very dryly. “Awfully hard on a man’s neck, getting caught riding a horse he doesn’t have a bill of sale for.”

She looked cynically at Jud. “Not on Cane’s Mesa, it isn’t, Mister Hudson. Who would hang them?”

Rufe grinned down at her. “You, more’n likely. You can rope pretty well, shoot pretty well. I figure you could also lynch pretty well.”

She watched them, and never smiled, and after a while she turned and went back to the big old log house. They finished mounding the earth, hauled Rufe’s outfit as well as the shovels back to the barn, then headed for the creek that ran from north to south on the east side of the yard, out a quarter mile or so, and got deeply into the willow thicket before they stripped down. Every now and then Jud would part the willows and look back at the lighted window in the log house. Finally, when Rufe stepped into the water and gasped, Jud said: “All right, you go first and I’ll keep watch.” He was standing back there naked as a jaybird except for his hat, swatting
at mosquitoes. Rufe took another step, shivered all over, then gasped back an answer.

“You don’t have to keep watch, for hell’s sake. She’s in the house, and, anyway, she don’t even know we’re out here.”

Jud would not accept this. “Like hell I don’t,” he hissed. “She came up onto us over where we buried your horse, didn’t she, and this is a sight worse.”

Rufe did not argue. For one thing that innocent-looking water must have come straight down off some Colorado mountaintop that had ice on it all year around. For another thing, the mosquitoes, accustomed to having to feed off animals with thick coats of hair, were coming to the bathing hole in clouds, and, until Rufe finally got deep down into the water, they bit him mercilessly. Up in the willows Jud finally used his hat, and his sizzling profanity, to fight them off, and the hat worked fairly well, while the cursing did not help one bit.

Ordinarily they creek-bathed at the hottest time of day, then lay under a blazing sun to dry off. To-night, they dressed while still dripping wet, then hightailed it for the bunkhouse, closing and barring the door after them as though those ravenous little flying creatures had the strength to open the door.

They fell into bed and did not even look up when a rooster crowed from the barn loft, did not stir until the sun finally listed up out of New Mexico, and shone across Cane’s Mesa in Colorado.

J
ud rode out to drift back a little herd of horses that had appeared westerly a couple of miles. Elisabeth was sure they belonged to her, at least that some of them did, and, when Jud had saddled up, he had cast a long look at Rufe, who had said nothing, simply nodding his head.

But nothing happened. There was not another horseman in sight, and the day was another epic of golden fragrance and perfect visibility. A man could see for many miles.

They corralled the horses, Jud took his horse in-side to care for him, and out where Rufe was leaning upon the stringers, gazing in, Elisabeth said all those AC horses belonged to Chase, and the ones with the Lance and Shield mark on their left shoulder belonged to her. Of the thirty-three horses, nine were Lance and Shield. Rufe was interested, and, while she was explaining, Jud ambled out to stand with them.

She pointed to a barrel-chested, handsome dun horse that acted a little like a stallion. He kept maneuvering himself between the other horses and the people, and would flatten his ears if another horse seemed about to move past him, in front.

“He’s stagy,” she said, “for a very good reason.

He ran at stud until he was seven. Now he’s almost nine years old.”

Jud leaned and slowly straightened up wearing a slight frown. “You altered him at seven, ma’am?”

She put a withering look upon Hudson. “Chase altered him, Mister Hudson. Do I look that green?”

Jud, catching Rufe’s amused twinkle, rolled up his eyes as though in supplication. “Miz Cane, all I did was ask a question. How come, every time I open my mouth, you want to shove your fist down it?”

She gripped the topmost corral stringer with strong, tanned hands and stared stonily in at the horses for a long while, a battle obviously under way deep down. Finally she looked at Rufe, who was relaxedly watching her, then looked on past to Jud.

“I apologize. I…you’re right, Mister Hudson, I’ve been downright rude.”

For Jud, this was worse than being snapped at, so he pointed to a rather raw-boned dark horse and mentioned that one time, years back, he’d owned a horse with that build and color that had been tougher than a rawhide cannon ball.

The conversation got back to normal, which, for livestock people, was to a discussion of animals, horses or cattle, or the things that affected either or both, such as the weather, the prospects for a good season, and so forth. In the end Elisabeth, who had been leaning there studying that seal-brown horse, said: “You can have him, Mister Miller, if you want him.” She glanced at the other horses. “He’s a well-broke animal, and so is that sorrel mare with the flaxen mane and tail. So is the little chunky gray horse, but the others…I haven’t had time even to break them to lead.”

They moved to release all the horses but the brown one, and, when they closed the sagging old gate, confining him, he raced back and forth whinnying to his departing friends.

They went around to the front of the bunkhouse, which had been built to house Elisabeth’s long-gone brothers, and sat in kindly shade beneath a warped wooden overhang upon the plank porch where two benches were dowelled into the wall, and where two handmade chairs showed the ravages of being left out in the weather through many harsh winters.

There, while Rufe tossed his hat down beside him upon the bench, disclosing a face Mexican-dark from the eyes down, and almost indecently white from the eyes up, Elisabeth sat in one of the chairs, and Rufe cocked back the other one, with his booted feet hooked over the railing as he said: “About that dun stag, out there, Miz Cane, did he just come in one day, altered?”

She explained. “I found him by himself under some trees, with a fever. They cut him in midsummer and the flies had maggotted him pretty bad, Mister Miller. He was sick, so I didn’t have very much trouble driving him home, and doctoring him.”

Rufe said: “In July, ma’am?”

She raised cornflower blue eyes. “Yes.” Then she added the rest of it, because they were all livestock people and cutting a stallion then turning him out in fly time meant the same thing to all of them—a prolonged, agonizing death for a bleeding animal that could not really protect his wound from foul-smelling, inescapable infection.

“They knew what they were doing, Mister Miller, the same as when they shot my bull. The same as
when they’ve somehow or other whittled me down to may be a dozen horses and those few old gummer cows we worked yesterday They’re telling me what to expect.”