the Man from the Broken Hills (1975) (19 page)

"You could do worse. She's a fine girl, Talon, and there isn't a better cook or baker in the country. She'll make some man a fine wife."

Now I was getting uneasy. I didn't like the sound of what he seemed to be leading up to. I grabbed the last doughnut and took a bite, then a swallow of coffee. I got up hastily. "Ben's waitin' out there. I'd better go."

"All right," he sounded irritated, "but you think on it."

I took another swallow of coffee and went out the door, but paused a moment on the stoop to eat the last of that doughnut. As I stood there in the dark I heard Barby Ann's voice, and it sounded just like her face had looked that other day.

"Pa? What you trying to do? Marry me off to that no-good cowhand?"

"Nothing of the kind. I thought--"

"Well, don't think about it. When I marry I'll choose my own man. In fact, you might as well know. I already have."

"Havewhat ? Married?"

"No, pa. I've picked my man. I'm going to marry Roger Balch."

"RogerBalch ?" His voice was a shade louder. "I thought his pa was figurin' on him marrying that Timberly girl."

Her voice was cold, a shade ugly. "That will change, Pa. Believe me, that will change."

"Roger Balch?" His tone was thoughtful. "Why, Barby, I hadn't given that a thought. Roger Balch ... of all things!"

Back at the herd I watched Ben Roper ride off with my thanks, and then I started around the bunch. Most of them were laying down, settled down to rest until their midnight stretch.

Yet my thoughts kept going back to that talk I'd overheard. Not that anybody had said anything wrong, but it was the tone I detected ... or thought I detected ... in their voices.

I'd have sworn that Roger Balch had told her he was through with her, and that was the reason she had wanted me to kill him. Now she had changed her mind and was going to marry him.

Now just what did that mean?

Riding night-herd when things are quiet is a mighty easy time for thinking. It's almighty still out there and the cows are companions enough. You just set your horse, letting the natural habit of your mind listen and notice anything wrong with the herd, and then your thoughts go where they will.

Barby Ann, mad clean through, wanted me to kill Roger Balch. Yet now she told her father she was going to marry him?

A cover-up? Or a change of mind? Or ... and the thought chilled me ... had she thought of death for somebody else?

Like Ann Timberly ...

Chapter
17

Joe Hinge sat his horse and looked at us. There were Ben Roper, Tony Fuentes and me, all mounted and ready to go, and it not daybreak yet.

"Take it easy," Joe advised. "Don't run no cattle. Roust out what you find of Stirrup-Iron or Spur and get them back here. Steer clear of Tory Benton or any of that outfit. He'll be on the prod, maybe. Talon thinks they'll lay off, and we got to hope he's right, but don't you boys scatter out more'n you have to. Three quick shots, and you come together."

"Where?"

"Right where we first met up with Talon the first time. Right there. But if you have to, hole up and make a fight of it. You boys are all grown men, and you know what you have to do. Do it easy as you can an' get out. We don't want trouble if we can help it. First place, it don't make no sense. Second place, we're outnumbered and outgunned."

He paused. "Not that we can't fight. We can. I rode with Jeb Stuart. Fuentes grew up fightin' and Ben, here, he was in the Sixth Cavalry. If need be, we can do our share."

I glanced at Ben. "Sixth Cavalry? Ever run into a long-geared Tennessee boy named William Tell Sackett?"

He laughed. "I should smile. Right out of the mountains and didn't know from nothin', but he sure could shoot!"

"He's a cousin of mine."

Ben Roper glanced at me. "I'll be damned. You're cousin to Tell? I figured Talon for a French name."

"It is. My ma was a Sackett."

We rode out, not talking. We had a few miles to go before we reached the Balch and Saddler range, but their riders could be anywhere about and we hoped to see them first.

It was short-grass country, with scattered patches of mesquite. We spotted a few cattle, most of them Balch and Saddler. We were coming up a cliff from the lowlands when we saw three riders coming toward us. One of them was Ingerman, another was Tory Benton, and the third was Roger Balch.

"Ride easy now!" Hinge warned. Then he added, angrily, "Just our luck to have that young hothead along!"

We pulled up and let them come to us. I reined my horse off to one side a mite, and Fuentes did the same. Roger was in the lead. "Where the hell d' you think you're goin'?" he demanded.

"Roundin' up cattle," Hinge said. "We're after anything with a Stirrup-Iron or a Spur brand."

"You were told there were none around!" Roger said. "Now back off and get out of here!"

"A few weeks back," I said quietly, "I saw Stirrup-Iron and Spur cattle up yonder. Those are the ones we want, and nothing else."

He turned on me. "You're Talon, I take it. I've heard of you." He looked again. "At the social! You were the one bought the box!"

"I've been around," I said.

"All right," he said, "now move. Or we move you!"

"If I were you," I said quietly, "I'd talk to my pa first. Last time I talked to him, he didn't have any objections to us rounding up cattle."

"Get off!" he said. Then the gist of my comment seemed to reach him. "You talked to Pa? When was this?"

"Few days back, over east of here. Seemed like we understood each other. Had a right friendly talk. Somehow I don't think he'd like trouble where there need be none."

Tory Benton broke in, roughly. "Hell, Rog, let me take him! What's all this talk for? I thought you said we were going to run them off?"

Hinge spoke quietly. "There's no need for trouble here. All we want is to drive our cattle off your range, just as your boys will want to drive some of yours off ours."

"Unless you want to make an even swap," Roper suggested. "You keep what you've got of ours, and we'll keep what we've got of yours."

"The hell with that!" Roger declared. "How do we know how many head you've got?"

"The same way we know how many you've got," Roper said.

Tory Benton was edging off to one side. There was a gnawing tension in him, a kind of driving eagerness to prove himself. "You told 'em to go, Rog," he said suddenly. "Let's make 'em!"

Roger Balch was uncertain. The mention of his father having a talk with me disturbed him. Arrogant he might be, and troublehunting he might be, but none of the trouble he hunted was with his father.

What might have happened I didn't know. My own pistol was resting easy in its holster and my rifle was in its scabbard. I was dividing my attention between Tory Benton and Roger, when suddenly Ingerman spoke. "Hold it up. Here comes Balch."

My eyes never left Benton, but I could hear horses approaching ... more than one.

Balch rode up, two riders with him. "Pa? This man says you and him had an understanding. That he can gather cattle."

Balch glanced at me. "What else did he tell you?"

"Nothin' else."

Balch reined his horse around. "Gather your cattle," he said to me, "but don't mess around. I don't want my stuff all spooked."

"Thanks," I said, and rode right past Benton.

"Another time," he said.

"Anytime," I replied.

The wind was picking up and turning cool. We rode on, found some Stirrup-Iron stock and began working the mesquite to round out the cattle.

We scattered, working carefully through a couple of square miles of rough, broken country. We saw many Balch and Saddler cattle, of course, but by nightfall we had thirty-seven head of Spur and nine of Stirrup-Iron. We bunched them in a canyon and built us a fire. By that time it was downright cold, a real Texas norther blowing.

For three days of cold, miserable weather we worked that corner of the range, collars turned up, bandanas over our faces except for Joe, whose hat had no chin strap. He tied his bandana over his hat to keep it from blowing away.

There was a good bit of mesquite wood in that canyon, and toward each nightfall we'd gather more to keep the fire going. Long ago somebody had grubbed out nearly an acre, probably figuring on building a house, and the roots lay piled nearby.

On the third day, Balch came riding with Ingerman. He looked over our cattle. "I'm going to cut them," he said.

I was standing at the fire, warming my hands. "Have at it," I said.

He needed little time to scan that herd. He rode through it several times and around it, then came up to the fire. "There's coffee," I said. "We're running short of grub."

"Send you some?" he offered.

"No, we've about got it. We'll drive 'em out come daylight."

"You made you a good gather." He glanced up at me. "No young stuff."

"No." I was squatting by the fire. "Balch, I'm going to take a few days off and do some snooping around, southeast of here."

"You'll lose your hair. I lost a rider down thataway maybe a year back ... a good man, too. Feller named Tom Witt. Rode off there, huntin' strays, he said. I never seen him again but his horse showed up, blood all over the saddle. It rained about then and we found no trail."

"Balch," I said, "you've got you some gunhands. Ingerman is good ... one of the best ... but somebody needs to ride herd on Benton."

"Rog will do it."

I took a swallow of coffee and made no comment. He looked at me as if expecting something, but I'd nothing to say. "You lay off, Talon. Just lay off. Benton's a good boy even if he is a little anxious."

The dregs of my coffee I tossed on the ground. Then I stood up. "Well, he carries a gun. When a man straps one on, he accepts responsibility for his actions. All I want you to understand is that his trouble is Benton trouble, and it need not be Balch trouble."

"He rides for me."

"Then put a rein on him," I said, a little more sharply. "If you hadn't come right then, somebody would be dead by now. Maybe several somebodies. You've got a son, and a man carries a lot of pride in a son."

"Rog can take care of himself." Balch looked up at me. "Don't tangle with him, Talon. He'll tear you apart. He's small, but he's fast and he's strong."

"All right," I said.

He got to his feet and mounted up. Then he turned, started to say something, and rode away. He was a hard man, a very hard man, but a lonely one. He was a man who believed the world had built a wall around him, and he was eternally battering at it to make breaches, never understanding that the wall was of his own building.

We moved our cattle out, come daybreak, having close to two hundred head, mostly Spur. It was spitting cold rain when we came up to the high ground. It looked level as a floor, but I knew it wasn't, for there were canyons cut into the earth, some of them two hundred feet deep. There would be cattle in some of them.

Hinge was no fool. "Talon, you an' Fuentes work the nearest canyons, start 'em downcountry, or if there's a way, bring 'em here. Ben an' me will stay by." And then he added, "Might be an attempt to stampede the stock, so we want to be on hand."

It was something I had not considered, but Roger Balch or Tory Benton might do just that. Purely as an annoyance, if nothing else.

We rode out over the plain until the nearest canyon split the earth wide open ahead of us. There was no warning. We were riding and suddenly there it was--a crack several hundred yards across. In the bottom there was green grass, some mesquite, even a cottonwood or two. And there were cattle.

Scouting the rim, we found a steep slide that stock had been using. With my horse almost on his haunches, we slid down and moved toward the cattle. There was Indian writing on some of the rocks, and I was wishing for time to look around. Fuentes glanced at the writing, then at me.

"Old," he said. "Very old."

"You read that stuff?"

He shrugged. "A little." He glanced at me. "My grandmother was Comanche, but this was not their writing. It is older, much older."

He spotted a big Stirrup-Iron steer and started him moving. The steer didn't want to go, putting his head down at me. He had forward-pointing horns, looking sharp as needles, but I rode right at him, and after a moment he broke and turned away, switching his tail in irritation. There was a nice little pocket of our stuff here, and by the time we'd come out at the canyon mouth some three miles below, we had thirty-odd head, mostly big stuff, well-fleshed.

We opened out on a flat scattered with mesquite. There were a few cattle, and with Fuentes holding and moving what we had, I rode off to check the brands. This was Balch and Saddler stuff, with a few of the major's. I cut out a four-year-old and started it toward the herd, my horse working nicely. It was a good cutting horse with a lot of cow savvy, which made the job easier. Riding that horse, the most I had to do was sit up there and look proud.

Yet I didn't like it. We were now a good five miles from Hinge and Roper, and we should be working together. Pushing a few head, I rejoined our bunch. "You know how to get up there?" I asked.