Desert of the Damned (8 page)

R
EIFEL HEARD
old whiskers telling the girl he was too far gone to be worth tinkering with, that the law was probably camped on his trail and that they had more trouble than they could handle now. But the girl got to work on him anyway.

The first two weeks he never got out of bed except when he had to on acctount of nature, and if the girl’d had her way he wouldn’t have got out at all. He didn’t mind right at first having a woman fussing over him because most of the time he was a heap too groggy to care about anything. But after the fever went out of him and he got enough better that he was able to take in the groceries she spooned him it got rightdown embarrassing to be having her washing him and rolling him around in that bed like she did. She was strong and hard as a white oak post and considerable set in her ways, he discovered, but when she started to skin him out of his underwear he drew the line.

“Don’t be an idiot!” She glared at him, furious. “You think it matters to me what you look like?”

“Well, it matters to
me!”
he flung back at her.

“You expect to wear them damn things forever? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you they ought to be washed?”

“Go ahead and wash them if it’ll make you feel better, but I’ll take care of getting out of ’em. When you ain’t around,” he added, pointedly. And that was the end of that conversation.

He was plenty aware that if it hadn’t been for her he would have cashed in his chips. He supposed he owed her something for that. He had plenty of time to think about it and the more he thought the more he was inclined to wish by God he hadn’t ever come near here. For it was plain as plowed ground she meant to collect. He remembered the old man’s crack about trouble and, by all the signs and signal smokes, that scrinch-eyed old crock hadn’t been talking just to hear his head rattle.

It was the damndest spread he had ever put up at. He never heard anyone laugh around the place and more than half the time the crew sat around playing cards and whittling — what time, that is, they weren’t fiddling with their guns. He could see the bunkhouse any time he wanted to peer through the cheesecloth covering the window that was right beside his bed, and if that bunch ever did any saddle slicking it was a cinch it wasn’t being done in the daytime.

The whole setup was enough to worry any man who had an itch to reform. Near as he could figure there were only six hands yet that outsized bunkhouse could have stowed away thirty without crowding anyone. The crew looked more like guys who were riding the grubline than they did the forty-a-month kind who punched cattle. Except for one thing — range bums mostly never bothered with guns. These birds were weighted down plenty.

A lot of gents, Reifel figured, would consider this layout had all the earmarks of a spread on the rustle. He hadn’t made up his own mind yet but he’d no doubt whatever it was headed for gunsmoke. There was that kind of tightness hanging in the air.

Towards the end of the second week it began to get on his nerves. Especially the girl. She never said very much but time and again he had caught her watching him. He could almost hear the wheels going round. She was wondering if it was time yet to fetch up his indebtedness.

And there was another funny thing. The old man spent most of his time on the porch. Probably with a bottle. Swigging his guts away in that creaking rocker. He never did a lick of work. He never swapped any talk with that bunch at the bunkhouse. He never spoke to the girl that he wasn’t complaining. She didn’t pay much attention. He paid none at all to her.

Her name was Gert Kavanaugh. She wasn’t hard on the eyes. She had taffy-colored hair. Her voice was all right; though it was deep and kind of husky it didn’t hurt your ears. Her red lips could quicken in a mighty fetching smile and he liked the way her firm young breasts poked out the fronts of the shirts she wore. He often wondered how she’d look in a dress and sometimes, during his more unguarded moments, he would even get to wondering how she’d be in a bed. But she was pretty weak tea if a man was minded to compare her to that black-haired filly who had been on the stage.

It was during the late afternoon of his tenth day at Boxed Y, that Reifel’s curiosity finally prodded him to action. There was nobody around — nor hadn’t been since noon — except the old man interminably creaking his goddam rocker.

Reifel got himself up and, slipping out of the bed, went catfooting over to the chair where his clothes were. He stood listening a moment. Satisfied that whiskers was going to keep on rocking he picked up his belt and got the gun from his holster. He broke open the weapon and extracted the paper from the barrel where he had hidden it.

Marta May Lamtrill.

Even her name had the ring of class.

That was one thing about the genuine article — you could tell it every time. He remembered the blue eyes behind the black lashes. The red lips. The regal gestures and the just-so way she had of carrying herself. Everything about her — even to his untutored eyes — proclaimed the earmarks of a Lady.

Marta May Lamtrill.

It made him wonder, by God, if he dared look so high. First he’d have to find her and that might take a deal of doing. A lot harder than that would be the making of her acquaintance. He reckoned that would take a heap of maneuvering because a girl like her with all that refinement wasn’t going to take up with every guy that took a shine to her. Half the multimillionaires in the East were probably dogging her; but it was the thought of her old man that really got Ben down. By the tell of that drummer he was powerful big stuff and it was dollars to doughnuts he’d be more than damn particular who came calling on his daughter. He might even want their rating in one of them Wall Street journals.

Reifel looked at her name again and sighed. Turning over a new leaf began to look like it might take considerable more effort than he’d figured.

He had just about come to this reluctant conclusion when, chancing to glance through the open window — the one by his bed which was covered with cheesecloth — he caught sight of a horsebacker entering the yard. The rider was still half hidden by a stand of live oak but he could tell by her taffy hair it was Gert. And by her seat in the saddle he could tell she was mad.

Suddenly curious, Reifel watched her. She made straight for the porch. The porch was beyond the bedroom ell and cut off from his vision by the wall of a room the girl used for an office. But by getting back in bed with his ear close to the window Reifel knew from experience he could probably pick up the most of anything they said.

He wasn’t ashamed to do it.

Gert Kavanaugh’s husky voice was tight. “The crew’s pulled out — lock, stock and barrel! They’ve gone. Skedaddled. The whole damn bunch of them!”

The old man quit rocking. “I told you to pay them Saturday — ”

“What did you think I would pay them with? Stones? Do you know how much we’ve got in the bank? A hundred fifty-four dollars and thirty-six cents — and we still have to eat.”

“You’ll have to sell some more land. Sell those ten sections north of Sunset; that’s — ”

“They didn’t pull out because they hadn’t been paid. They were bought out or scared out by Lamtrill. Devil Iron’s grabbed Bear Flats — they’ve got a crew there right now fencing our stuff off from water!”

The old man loosed a flood of invective.

The girl said harshly, “Swearin’ won’t help. We’ve got to get back that water. You’d better ride in and see — ”

“You know goddam well I can’t set a horse!” the old man shouted. “The miseries in my back has been achin’ me somethin’ terrible an’ them frostbit toes of mine is just about to kill me ever’ time I git up!”

“With all that rotgut you’ve been — ”

“Is that any way to talk to your Daddy? Sweet Jesus, girl, I should think you would have more feelin’,” Sug whined. “After all I’ve done — ”

“All right,” Gert said. “I’ll have a talk with the sheriff.”

“Now you’ve got it. You tell Seeb Dawson to git that sidewinder off’n my range. You tell him, by God, if he don’t I’ll come in with my crew an’ when they’ve got through with that town of Dry Bottom — ”

“What crew?” Gert asked, and Sug shouted blasphemies.

“I’ll hire the goddamdest crew that ever hit this country!”

“With what? That land around Sunset wouldn’t fetch ten cents an acre. There isn’t any water and it’s all cut up with gulches. It’s so close to the Galiuros the mountain lions would get every cow you put in it — ”

“Then sell somethin’ else. Just git me the money.”

“The trouble is,” said Gert’s voice, “the only water we’ve got — except these tanks at headquarters — is that Bear Flats lake — ”

“Sell the Oak Ridge range. Tell ’em they can use the west side of that lake — ”

“You’re forgetting Lamtrill’s fence. And the crew he’ll have watching it.”

“You have to tell them that? Hell’s hinges! Let the buyer look out for himself!” Sug snarled. “You don’t see none of ’em worryin’ about us — nor you won’t. It’s dog eat dog, an’ don’t you forget it.”

There was an interval of silence. At last Gert said thoughtfully, “Diamond X, up above us, has been hard hit by this drought. I believe they could be talked into leasing Oak Ridge if we’d guarantee their right to the west side of Bear Lake — ”

“You just said the lake was fenced — ”

“We’re not going to let Lamtrill get away with that. We’ll pull his fence down. We’ll drive him off Bear Flats.”

It was Sug’s turn to snort. “With what?” he jeered scornfully. “Promissory notes?”

“That lease money,” Gert said. “We’ll fetch in a crew that’s just as lawless as he’s got. We’ll give Devil Iron a dose of its own medicine…. I’ll be back,” she said abruptly. “I want to talk to that drifter.”

Reifel, in the bedroom, heard her boots hit the ground, but it didn’t immediately register. He was too taken up with trying to sort out his thinking; too confused and excited by Gert’s references to
Lamtrill.
The thump of her boots didn’t have any urgence until he heard the rasp of her spurs on the floorboards — the sudden banging of the screen. It came to him then he still had hold of the paper which the drummer had given Marta May to write her name on. There wasn’t time to put it back in the barrel of his pistol. He thrust it under his pillow and hastily pulled up the sheet.

He had hardly got his eyes closed when he heard the hall door open. Gert Kavanaugh’s voice, sharp with scorn, came at him coldly. “You’re a little bit late to be pretending you’re asleep. Next time you want to eavesdrop on anyone don’t get between two windows.”

Reifel’s cheeks turned hot. His eyes jerked open. “Nobody asked you to stand on that porch. If you wanted to keep your chinning so private — ”

She waved that aside. “I guess you’re entitled to know what you’re getting into.”

She swung the tawny hair back out of her eyes and took a good look at him. She tossed his clothes on the bed. She pulled the chair around to face him. “You may as well know the truth of this business. We haven’t any crew and we haven’t any money. We’re up against a polecat who aims to take over every square inch of this country from the Galiuros to the New Mexico line.”

“And you’re figuring to buck him.”

“We haven’t any choice. He’s getting ready to hit us with everything he’s got or he wouldn’t have grabbed Bear Flats, which is our richest grass and the only unfailing source of water we’ve got.”

“Who’s this guy, ‘Lamtrill’?”

“He owns the bank at Willcox, the one at Dry Bottom and the Pitchfork Cattle & Land Development Company — better known as the Devil Iron.

“He started south of Willcox about ten years ago with something like twenty sections and a bunch of scrub cows. After a couple of calf crops he had enough cash to open the bank at Dry Bottom. Then he started getting fat. He began acquirin’ land all around the county seat, buyin’ what chunks he couldn’t foreclose on. He started dabblin’ in politics. Four years ago he took over the bank at Willcox, the Stockman’s Bank & Trust. Then he started shovin’ north and west. In the south right now he pretty near encircles the whole east third of Cog Wheel. In the north he controls the Pinelenos and almost all the range around them to within ten miles of Safford. Last spring he grabbed forty sections of Boxed Y southeast of Bear Flats. Now he’s fencing our cattle away from Bear Lake. He’ll be wantin’ all of Aravaipa Valley by Christmas. We’ve
got
to fight him or get run straight out of the country.”

“You could sell out, couldn’t you?”

“You don’t savvy,” she said grimly. “He doesn’t want to
buy
Boxed Y. He figures to annex it.”

“There’s other outfits ain’t there?”

“Only two that amount to enough to get in his way — an’ they won’t. Diamond X, to the north of us, if they can’t get water will go up the spout like smoke up a chimney. Cog Wheel — they’re below us — is so scared of Lamtrill they’d sell out in a minute if anyone would take the place off their hands. The Diamond X is syndicate owned and they’ve still got some money, but Cog Wheel’s pretty near as bad broke as we are. Lamtrill won’t buy what he thinks he can take for nothing.”

“How has he gobbled all this land?”

“Range roughin’. Burnings, at first. Night riding an’ rustlin’. You couldn’t prove it of course. You’d be laughed out of court. He owns the banks and the law and a big chunk of two counties. He’s got three hard-ridin’ crews that do his devilment for him — ”

“You better pull down your shingle and go somewhere else.”

She looked at him stubbornly.

“You can’t fight him with outlaws. You’ve got nothing to offer them.”

“There’s close to twenty thousand cattle packing Lamtrill’s brand — you call that nothing?”

“Any guys you get won’t be worry in’ about brands. But you won’t get nobody. You can’t give them — ”

“I can give them a base of operations.”

“And if this Lamtrill’s the kind you make him out to be he’d have your whole outfit strung up by the neck before you ever got started. Don’t try it,” Reifel said. “When you start dealing with outlaws — ”

“I would deal with the devil if he’d help me put the skids under Lamtrill. I’m dead serious, Ben. Look,” she said, and moved over to the bed. With the tip of one finger she sketched out some contours. “There’s the lay of this country. Here’s Boxed Y. Up there is Diamond X and this down here is the Cog Wheel holdings. The rest of this picture’s all Devil Iron — get it? If you think Lamtrill’s bunch can watch a spread big as that — he’s got at least a hundred thousand sunk in buildings alone. He’s got a fortune in wire. I’ll run off his cattle. I’ll cut his fence in a million places. I’ll burn his buildings — break his banks. All I need is the right kind of men.”