Play a Lone Hand Read online

  Sarita raised her hand to hit him Sebree caught her wrist without rising and said harshly, “Stop this damned nonsense, Sarita!”

  “I’m leaving!” Sarita said. “There’s no way you can keep me here!”

  Sebree let go of her wrist and came to his feet. “That’s up to your husband.”

  Sarita turned swiftly to Bentham, “Can I, Sid?”

  Bentham regarded her with a total indifference, “No.”

  Sebree said, “Why don’t you take a trip? Catch the stage out tomorrow and go to Santa Fe. Buy some clothes and wear out a couple of pairs of shoes at fandangos?” He picked up his wallet from the table and emptied it of the remaining double eagles. Picking them up, he extended his hand to Sarita. With a vicious swiftness, she knocked the coins from his hand, turned and ran out of the room.

  Sid sighed and rose to pick up the coins. When he had collected them and handed them back to Sebree, he said, “Shall I let her go?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “She won’t stop running until she’s in Kansas City.”

  “I don’t care about that either,” Sebree said. Standing, he finished his brandy in one gulp, wiped his mustaches, and said, “Let me know when Archer’s in town. Good night, Sid,” and moved across the room toward the door.

  Sarita, from the kitchen door, heard Sebree go out. Whatever hope she had held of an apology from Grady or even a gesture at reconciliation was gone, and she turned and walked past the big black iron stove to the pump at the sink. She pumped herself a tumbler of water and drank, then stared blankly at the wall. Grady’s casual brutality to her tonight was something new, and it signified her total defeat, she knew. With all the bitterness of a perceptive woman, she was aware now that she was simply a piece of goods guarded and sheltered for a man’s convenience, and now she was not even desirable.

  She remembered with a sharp nostalgia how it had been with Grady up until two years ago. Then she was living in the shabby shack on Corazon’s outskirts that her father, a railroad fireman, had left her at his death. In those days, she remembered bitterly, Grady had been wildly jealous of her. It had maddened him to know that she went to dances with ranch hands and town men—affairs his position would not allow him to attend. She suspected, too, that he believed there was something degrading about her surroundings, her taking in laundry to supplement the pittance her father had left, and her careless association with the Mexicans of her mother’s blood.

  It was this shame, combined with a fear that their relations might be discovered, that had prompted Grady’s suggestion of her marriage to Sid Bentham. It would be a marriage in name only, Grady had assured her. It would give her a certain respectability, and his calls on her would have the appearance of a visit to a family. Taltal was a pleasant place, he said, and she would have a woman working for her. The ever-changing stage passengers would keep her amused. And of course, there was the economic side; she would never know want or have to work again, for he had staked Bentham and the place was making money.

  There are worse things than work, she thought bitterly. In this brief moment of self-knowledge she saw herself for what she had been—a vain and fuzzy-minded girl without much character who had been flattered that a rich man desired her, but had not been shrewd enough to make that desire pay. Grady had wanted her without any risks attached. His jealousy, his pride and his cynical knowledge that he would some day tire of her had dictated her move to Taltal and her marriage to Sid. Even Grady’s fear of his wife’s discovering them had been a lie. And now that it was finished, she was married to an old man, a stranger, buried deep in a lonely mountain canyon away from life, from fun, from all affection.

  She heard Sid’s footsteps in the dining room crossing to the kitchen. She rinsed out the glass and was drying it when Sid came into the kitchen. He had an envelope in his hand, and he gave her a sidelong, indifferent glance on his way to the back door. Then, as if remembering, he halted and said, “He says you can go it you want.”

  Sarita said nothing, and Sid went out. Go where? she thought bitterly. For what? Who with? She realized now that she had long since lost her friends.

  Her Mexican relatives were still in Corazon, but she found that she had unconsciously acquired from Grady a contempt for their poverty, their ignorance and their shiftlessness. She wouldn’t go back to them, but she was shrewdly aware that in spite of her married name of Bentham, she was still a semi-literate Mexican to strangers.

  She turned down the lamp over the kitchen table, then glanced curiously at the back door, wondering what business had taken Sid out into the night, an envelope in his hand. What was it Sid was asking Grady when she halted in the saloon door—How soon do you want him? And Grady, counting out the money, had answered, Right away. It occurred to her then that Sid’s envelope contained a summons for someone.

  She moved over to the back door, stepped out into the night. Immediately, the ceaseless noise of the river filled the night with sound. The small adobe shack on the downstream side of the corrals should have been dark and unlit at this hour, for the cook, her hostler husband and their slow-witted son retired not long after dark. There was a lamp lighted in the shack now, and she watched it until the chill of the night made her shiver. Then she saw Julio and Sid, the former carrying a lantern, leave the house and head back for the corrals. Quickly she moved back into the kitchen and began to busy herself adjusting the stove for the night.

  Sid came in, gave a civil, “Good night,” and moved on into the dining room. She heard his footfalls on the stairs and his slow passage up the corrider to his room in front.

  For a moment she stood undecided. She had never interested herself in Sid’s business but she had the unspoken conviction, without any proof, that it was not always honest business. On sudden impulse, she blew out the kitchen lamp and stepped outside into the night. She made her way carefully in the dark, skirting the spring wagon which she remembered lay in her path, and halted at the corral. Julio already had the best horse saddled. He was bucking the flap of his bulging saddle bag as she crossed the corral toward him. At the sound of her approach, he turned his head toward her. His habitual expression of surliness, a protest against this grinding work of the station was only surface deep, for he was a lonely, gentle young man. She said in quick Spanish, “Mr. Bentham wants to know if you are carrying enough money, Julio?”

  The young man looked at her uncomprehendingly, then he said, “Isn’t this money good where I’m going?”

  This was easier than Sarita had hoped for and she asked quickly, “Where is it you are going?”

  “A place called Beaver County, Oklahoma—to the east.”

  “Of course your money is good there. You have it?”

  The young man nodded. Sarita said, “Good night,” and went back to the hotel.

  Pausing in the kitchen, she considered what all this could mean. Grady, through. Sid, was summoning a man from Beaver County, Oklahoma, and paying him a surprising sum to come here. She could only speculate on the reason, but remembering the scene in the barroom she was sure of one thing. The reason was secret, and it was important, else Grady would not have been so concerned about how much of his conversation with Sid had been overheard.

  A deep malice stirred in her then. Tonight, Grady had turned her loose into a world she really didn’t want to reenter. He was finished with her. But I’m not finished with him, she thought narrowly. Maybe, by waiting and watching, she could learn the reason behind Grady’s strange summons of a stranger from Oklahoma. Once she knew the reason, perhaps she could use it to hurt him.

  Giff finished the diamond hitch on the pack mules, and as he moved toward the livery, he glanced at the three saddled horses tied to the corral pole. The dun would be Welling’s, he decided; since Welling was paying the bill, he would get the best horse. At the office, he paused in the doorway. Cass Murray had a saddle atop his desk and was reworking the laces on a stirrup.

  “Where is he? At the Plains Bar?” Giff asked.

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nbsp; Cass nodded. “He was waiting on the doorstep when Harvey opened up. Have you got anything on the mule that gurgles?”

  “That’s what he’ll be buying now.”

  Cass straightened up and placed a sober regard on Giff. “I wish he was starting his resurvey somewhere besides Torreon.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Plenty, and you know it. You watch yourself, hear me?”

  Giff raised his hand in mild salute, said, “See you in a week,” and moved out of the runway, heading for the Plains Bar. Welling’s sudden decision of last night to take to the field for a resurvey of some of Torreon’s acquired homesteads still surprised him. He suspected that his own goadings, Fiske’s contemptuous silence and a lot of whiskey had prodded Welling into this sudden move against Torreon. It was a decision Welling was probably regretting at the moment, but one it was too late to retract now. And it was of small significance in the big fight against Sebree, Giff knew. It was a sort of tentative pecking at the edge of the swindle; a laborious and quibbling routine of Welling’s attempting to find out from reluctant and lying witnesses if homestead requirements had been satisfied. Giff knew it was Welling’s tentative show of authority, a kind of timid testing of Sebree’s power.

  Stepping into the saloon, he saw Welling downing his drink while Fiske watched idly. The saddlebag on the bar beside Welling had twin telltale bulges that Giff knew would be his carefully rationed sustenance of whiskey for the next few days.

  At the sight of Giff, they pulled away from the bar and the three of them walked in silence to the livery. For the first hour their talk was sparse, and Welling joined in none of it. He was still brooding, Giff guessed, on his failure to fire his surveyor’s chainman, and Giff wondered if he had discussed it with Fiske. Giff was aware that Welling was ignoring him, and he knew that Mary Kincheon’s action yesterday was still smarting.

  The country north of Corazon was a gently rolling, almost treeless plain, the wagon road running string straight along the very tips of the cedar-stippled foothills. Some time in midmorning they passed a crossroads adobe store and watered their horses at a rusty tank at the base of a clattering windmill. Beyond the store and still north was the first of the Torreon fence. They traveled alongside it for four miles before they came to the first gate and turned in. Afterward they moved across Torreon range cutting northeast over an ocean of grass that held hundreds of fat cattle. Past midday they came to a seep where Welling had decided the resurvey was to start. The seep, which was announced from a distance away by the paler green of cottonwood foliage, lay beneath a limestone outcrop thrusting a few feet higher than the surrounding country. At the bottom of a small depression stumpy willows matted the bog created by the small stream as it flowed east for a hundred yards and then vanished; a scattering of old cottonwoods surrounded it.

  While Fiske unrolled his plat and weighted it with stones before studying it, Giff unloaded the pack horse, unsaddled the other mounts and turned them loose, and made camp. Afterward, Fiske helped him put up the Sibley tent and stake down a wing of the tarp to serve as a windbreak for the reading of Fiske’s maps. Welling rode up to the limestone outcrop to locate the monument that would be the corner for the new survey.

  By the time he had returned and turned his horse loose to graze, Giff had broken out the sandwiches the hotel had provided for their midday meal, and Fiske had begun to eat. His mouth full, Fiske nodded to the limestone outcrop and asked Welling, “Did you see any buildings from there, Vince?”

  “There’s an abandoned dugout over the ridge. The roofs caved in, and it’s likely full of snakes.” Welling answered sullenly.

  Fiske snorted, “Value about ten dollars, I suppose.” He shook his head. Giff, remembering last night’s discussion with Fiske, recalled the old surveyor’s prediction. It had concerned what Fiske guessed they would find at the beginning of the resurvey of homesteads acquired by Torreon. There was a pattern, Fiske had said, in all these homestead frauds instigated by cattlemen. The required improvements were never made on the property, just as the six-month residence requirement was ignored. So long as perjury on the part of the entryman’s witnesses was a custom accepted by the Land Office, the pattern still held. One of Sebree’s riders had “homesteaded” this waterhole, and for his cheerful dishonesty and for the casual perjury of his two witnesses, he was probably rewarded with a bottle of whiskey or an extra day in town. Fiske had predicted they would find no improvements and no indication of residence, and Welling’s facts seemed to be bearing him out.

  Welling, already sore from the morning’s unaccustomed ride, stifled a sigh as he sat down and reached for his sandwich. The three of them heard the sound of approaching riders at the same time.

  Giff rose first, sandwich in hand, and saw the two riders who had come up behind the tent. They were moving through the grouped horses grazing around the seep and the first rider had a rifle across his saddle. Giff glanced briefly at Welling. Fiske was watching him too with a mild accusation so that Welling said sullenly, “I didn’t see them.”

  One rider, a Mexican, dropped back so that he was between the tent and the survey party’s horses. The man with the rifle reined in by the tarp, contriving to pull in his horse so that the rifle, still resting on the pommel, covered the three men afoot.

  Welling, sandwich in hand, gestured to the food on the ground and said affably, “’Light and eat.”

  Giff was watching the rider and he didn’t like what he saw. The man’s clothes were almost tatters and he had the hungry half-mean look of an overworked rider whose staggering amount of labor, whose unwavering loyalty and whose life are hired for a dollar a day by the big cattle companies.

  “Know where you are?” the man asked.

  “Torreon, aren’t we?” Welling said.

  The rider dipped his head briefly in assent. “This is private land. Get off it.”

  Welling’s quick smile seemed not to betray any uneasiness, “We’re Land Office men on a resurvey.”

  “Not here you aren’t. You’re trespassers.”

  Welling’s voice held a quiet confidence as he said, “My friend, I can bring the sheriff with me, only it’s a long ride to get him. Maybe I had better put it this way. If I’m barred from resurveying this land, I’ll recommend all patents granted be canceled and the land will revert to the public domain.”

  The rider moved his rifle until it pointed at Welling. “You take that up with the boss. Now take your left hand—left I said—and lift your gun out and throw it over the tent.”

  Only then did Welling seem to realize that his authority meant nothing here and now. He glanced at Fiske in rising anger and bafflement and then shuttled his gaze to the rider.

  The man said quietly, “I don’t fool,” and lifted the rifle slowly to his shoulder.

  “All right, all right,” Welling said hastily, and did as he was bid. The rider turned his attention to Fiske then and said, “You do the same.”

  “I don’t pack one,” Fiske said.

  The rider looked at Giff now, “You, too.”

  “The hell with you,” Giff said quietly.

  The rifle began to rise again. Giff looked up and along the barrel into the rider’s eye and a wild stubborness was in him.

  “Once more. Throw your gun away.”

  Giff didn’t move. It was Welling, prodded by fright, who moved over to Giff, yanked the gun from the waistband of his pants and threw it hastily over the tent as if it were red hot.

  The rifle slacked back to the pommel and the rider said levelly, “There’s a gate southwest about six miles. Your horses will be tied to it. Tomorrow you can pick up this stuff there too.” He gave Giff a hard, lingering stare of almost respectful curiosity before he turned his head and signaled to the Mexican. Pulling his mount around he gave Welling’s horse a cut across the rump with his rope and then, half circling the other horses and whistling shrilly, the pair of them pushed the animals up over the rim of the depression and were out of sight. />
  Fiske and Welling glanced briefly at each other, then both looked at Giff. “I don’t know why I didn’t let him shoot you;” Welling said angrily.

  “I know why. You were scared.” Giff said thinly. “By a bluff.”

  The color crept into Welling’s loose face and he said sardonically, “That’s a second guess you can afford, now he’s gone.”

  “He was hazing you and you took it.”

  Welling glanced at Fiske in appeal. “You think so, Bill?”

  Fiske made a wry face and thumbed his derby off his forehead. “I hate to admit it, but I think he was.”

  Welling considered this under Giff’s hot gaze. Giff said, “Sebree put him up to it. You’re afoot with a long hike ahead of you. The boys in Henty’s will be laughing about it tonight.”

  Welling’s eyes held a deep hatred as he looked at Giff. Fiske, sourly regarding the sandwich he still held in his hand, said, “Did he say six miles?”

  Giff said, “It’s eight.”

  “He said six,” Welling countered flatly.

  Giff swiveled his head to look at Welling. His face was stiff, and still held the dregs of anger. “I’m talking about the distance to the ranch, not the fence.”

  Welling didn’t answer for a moment. “What are you going to do? Complain to Sebree?” he asked with heavy irony.

  “In my own way,” Giff agreed quietly. “If you aim to stay in this country even another week, you’ll come too.”

  Welling didn’t answer him. He turned and walked around the tent and behind it, and Giff heard him pick up the guns. Giff surprised Fiske watching him and he said truculently, “Well?”

  “Not my department,” Fiske said.

  With the two guns in his fist, Welling returned to Giff and handed him Cass’s battered Colt. Avoiding the questioning look in Giff’s eyes, Welling glanced down at the gun he was holstering and said, “I think we can settle this another way. When Edwards …”