Blood on the Moon Page 13

  Pindalest was obviously anxious to hear Jim’s news, but he was playing his role of affable host first. He had tidied himself somewhat and put on his boots and smoothed down his hair. Drinking the raw whisky and welcoming its fire, Jim thought suddenly that he had seen this face a thousand times behind bank wickets, in stores, in railroad stations. It was a face of small greeds, transparent and shrewd.

  Pindalest gave him time to put his glass down and then he asked with affected unconcern, “Well, how goes it with you and Riling?”

  “Fine, Mr. Pindalest, fine,” Jim murmured. “I’ve got the news you’ve been waiting to hear.”

  Pindalest shed all pretense of unconcern. He leaned over as far as his paunch would allow and said excitedly, “What is it, Jim? Has Lufton given up?”

  Jim nodded. “That’s about the way it shakes down. Riling had a parley with him after I pointed out to Lufton that he had to sell. He pounded sand there for a while, but he came around.”

  Pindalest settled back slowly into his chair, a broad smile on his narrow face. The naked greed in his eyes was not pleasant to see, but Jim’s face was expressionless.

  “Bravo,” Pindalest said. “Bravo.” And then, quickly, “Does Lufton suspect anything?”

  “Nothing so far.”

  Pindalest smiled again, and Jim gave him a moment to contemplate his triumph, count his money and spend it in his own mind.

  “That’s fine,” Pindalest mused. “A great piece of work. It went off without a hitch.”

  Jim looked dubious. “Well, maybe one hitch, you might call it.”

  Pindalest was immediately wary, donning caution like a coat. “And what’s that?” he asked carefully.

  Jim decided to let him have it, making it sound grave. When the facts came out Pindalest would swing back to even higher spirits.

  “Lufton wanted more money than Riling had,” Jim said.

  Pindalest scowled, and at the same time his eyes were veiled with a slow suspicion. “I see,” he murmured. “That’s bad. Riling should have kept to his original estimate.” He pursed his lips and said suddenly, “How much more?”

  “Three thousand,” Jim said. “Riling said his selling price to you still held, so this was just a loan. He’d take the three thousand out of his own cut.”

  Jim had anticipated Pindalest’s reaction, and it came with the simple idiocy of greed. Again Pindalest was beaming, again smug, his good humor restored. Jim decided to let him find out the next move himself.

  “Easily done, easily done,” Pindalest purred. “If that’s all that’s holding us up there’s nothing to worry about. Here, let’s have another drink to celebrate.”

  He mixed this drink himself, and Jim noticed that this time he did not go light at all. Jim’s drink was burning in his belly and he didn’t want another immediately, but he accepted it.

  “Here’s to success,” Pindalest toasted. “We can drink to that now without even worrying about it, can’t we?”

  “We can,” Jim said, and Pindalest laughed and drank his whisky neat. Then he looked around the room with a pleased, musing expression and rubbed his soft hands together. “Well, well,” he murmured apropos of nothing and sat down again.

  “So it’s a little matter of three thousand dollars that Lufton’s worried about, is it? Well, we can fix that quickly.”

  A thought occurred to him; Jim could see it start, unfold and come to full flower in Pindalest’s mind.

  “Let’s see,” Pindalest said slowly. “Maybe this is going to be a nuisance. I haven’t got the cash here at the agency.”

  Jim said nothing, and he knew how Pindalest’s mind was working. Lack of cash meant a check, and he knew that all through this affair Pindalest had been very careful to give Riling cash so none of his moves could be traced through his bank checks. This was what Jim was counting on—Pindalest’s continued caution even when the deal was a certainty. But he couldn’t speak; he was supposed to be a not overbright puncher who was a minor fellow conspirator.

  “Damn!” Pindalest said petulantly. He looked at Jim now. “Does Riling need the money to sign the deal?”

  “Lufton said cash.”

  Pindalest sighed. “Then I’ll have to ride over to Sun Dust with you myself to draw out the money.”

  Jim nodded placidly. “Riling said you likely would.”

  Pindalest rose now, a deep frown of petulance on his face. He rammed his hands in his pockets and paced once around the room, head down.

  “How’s the pass? Clear?”

  “A little snow,” Jim said. “It’ll hold off, I reckon.”

  “Well, I’ve got to go back with you; that’s all there is to it,” Pindalest said sternly. He hated the discomfort of the trip, Jim knew, but he wasn’t going to let that stand between him and his money. “If we start tomorrow early we can be across by tomorrow night, can’t we?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good. That’s settled. Where’s your bedroll, Garry? I can put you up tonight, and we’ll get an early start.”

  Jim said slowly, “You think that’s smart, Mr. Pindalest? I mean, me hangin’ around here? They’ll be wonderin’ who I am and remember me, and maybe that wouldn’t be so good in case of trouble later.”

  “But where’ll you sleep?”

  “Anywhere out in the brush. When you pass on the road tomorrow I’ll pick you up.”

  Pindalest nodded slowly, glad to accept Jim’s suggestion. It had stemmed from a twofold desire on Jim’s part: he didn’t want to spend the night with Pindalest and he wanted to make what he was about to say final and irrevocable.

  He rose now and reached for his hat.

  “You’re not going?”

  “The less time I spend here, the better,” Jim said.

  Pindalest put out his hand and Jim took it. “Like another drink?”

  “Thanks, no,” Jim said.

  He started for the door, and Pindalest followed him, a hand on his shoulder.

  Jim snapped his fingers suddenly and stopped. “I come close to forgettin’ it,” he said, turning to the agent. “Riling says call off the army. Lufton will likely run over the deadline roundin’ up some beef that we stampeded for him. Riling says he don’t want to have to explain to the army about it, and a note from you would stop them.”

  “Of course, of course,” Pindalest said. “What day is this? The twenty-eighth.” He paused, pinching his lower lip between thumb and forefinger. “It’s an easy two days’ march from Fort Liggett, so they’d start on the twenty-ninth around noon. Yes, I’ll get a message to them by tomorrow morning, in plenty of time. I’ll start a man now.”

  Jim nodded and put on his Stetson, lowering his face so Pindalest couldn’t see any expression that might betray his excitement.

  He said, “I’ll pick you up on the road tomorrow. Better make it early. And bring a coat because it’s cold up in the pass.”

  “Right. Good night, Garry.”

  Jim went out into the lowering dusk, and he experienced a quiet, vicious pleasure that surprised him. The deadline was lifted, and tomorrow he’d have Pindalest over the pass. Then the real job would begin.

  Chapter Nine

  Joe Shotten had had a toothache for three days. The beating he had taken from Jim Garry in Sun Dust started it, and nothing, including whisky and cutplug tobacco, could stop it. It wasn’t a raging kind of toothache that will send a man over the driest deserts or through the deepest snow to get the tooth yanked, but it was one of those dull, persistent aches that raveled a man’s temper and got him into trouble.

  Joe was headed for trouble now. Riling’s crew had been waiting for him at Chet Avery’s place for three days now. This last day Milo Sweet was riding patrol on the crossed Blockhouse herd, and he had seen a large Blockhouse crew systematically scattering the beef in every draw and gully from the rim to the Massacre. While he and the others did nothing, of course, because Riling wasn’t there. Sweet had put them all in an edgy temper by his fire-eating insistence that they
had lost their chance to make trouble for Blockhouse’s crossed herd.

  His raging before now had broken up the poker game and scattered the men to their bunks. They weren’t comfortable bunks either, for Chet Avery was a farmer and used the bunkhouse for a tool shed. Added to that, Avery’s womenfolk refused to cook for them, and they had been feeding for three days on a half-cooked mess stewed up by them in a borrowed wash kettle. They were sick of waiting, sick of inaction, sick of Milo Sweet. And Joe Shotten had a toothache.

  He prowled through the bunkhouse after the noon meal. The sight of Avery’s hand cultivator in a corner irritated him beyond reason. He was used to having these men ignore him as an all-but-convicted gun-hand rider for Riling, but their added taciturnity now angered him.

  Sweet was playing an impatient game of solitaire at the table. Joe came over and watched him for a moment and said, “Red queen on black king.”

  Milo looked up at him. Sweet hadn’t shaved for a week, and his beard grew just like his hair—in all directions. It gave him a ferocious and half-wild look that wasn’t far from missing his true frame of mind.

  “Maybe I’m playin’ a new game,” he snarled. “How do you know?”

  “You was tryin’ to run a sandy,” Shotten sneered.

  “All right, I’m cheatin’ myself. What have you got to say about that?”

  Shotten shrugged. “I don’t care.”

  “Then keep out of it,” Sweet said flatly. “The next time you stick your nose in here I’ll slap it off.”

  “Wait a minute,” Shotten said softly.

  Somebody, Big Nels, drifted out of a bunk and came over and put his shoulder against the top tier of bunks and looked meaningly at Shotten. One of the Paulsen boys joined him, only he wasn’t so subtle; he carried a rifle in his hand, and there was plain dislike in his face.

  Sweet said, “All right, you hundred-a-month hero, go on and talk.”

  Shotten shrugged and walked to the door and stood in it, back to them, looking out. In a quarrel they’d gang him, he knew. He would gladly have murdered them, man by man, at that moment. To him they were a bunch of dumb hard-scrabble nesters and two-bit cowmen, not a man among them. He had a sudden longing for the company of Riordan and Riling, who were more like himself and who could keep this rabble respectful. And his tooth ached damnably.

  Avery’s house lay across a hundred feet of hardpacked yard, a neat long shack backed by a nice stand of half-stripped cottonwoods behind it. The barn and corrals lay off to the right, and between them and the house were the well and chicken house. Shotten vaguely resented the neatness and prosperous look of the place even under this gray fall sky.

  While he was watching, Chet Avery’s fifteen-year-old daughter came out of the house, carrying a water bucket and a pan of bones.

  When she reached the well she deposited her bucket. She went on toward the barn and stopped and then whistled for her dog.

  Shotten eyed her attentively. She was a slim girl and was wearing one of her mother’s dresses that was too large for her under an old coat of her father’s. But there was something young and appealing in the way she walked, her kind of coltish grace, that Shotten noted slyly.

  He stepped down into the yard and walked toward her, hands in pockets. She was still whistling as he approached, and then the dog broke from the corrals and ran toward her. He was a big-footed pup, and she was still enough of a child to talk baby talk to him as she set the pan on the ground in front of him.

  “That’s a might fine hound,” Shotten observed.

  The girl wheeled, startled, to face him. What she saw didn’t lessen her uneasiness: Shotten’s loose lips were twisted in what he hoped was an engaging smile, but the hunger in his eyes couldn’t be disguised.

  “Well, he’s not much of a dog,” the girl said shyly. “He’s kind of nice though.”

  Shotten stared at her, and in that stare was the whole history of his association with women. The girl felt this and her face flushed, but she was not going to move. This was her father’s place, and she had a right here, her expression seemed to say.

  “I ain’t seen you around,” Joe said. “A pretty girl like you ain’t goin’ to get any prettier sittin’ in the house all day.”

  “I—I’ve been working,” the girl said. She was furiously embarrassed.

  Joe came closer to her, still smiling. “You ought to get out and see the country, show yourself. Don’t you ever go to dances?”

  “Yes.”

  “I ain’t seen you at any,” Joe went on. “I’d sure have fought some of these young kids for a dance with you too.”

  The girl’s gaze dropped, but she held her ground stubbornly and did not answer.

  Joe grinned with amusement. “I got the prettiest bay horse with white socks you ever seen, gentle with women too. You figure sometime you could—”

  That was as far as he got. He felt himself whirled around by his collar and then something smashed into his jaw with a ton weight. He sprawled on his back in the dust, and his first instinctive reaction was to streak for the gun at his hip. He heard the girl scream, and then a bony, snarling fury hit his chest. Joe knew it was the pup, and he raised his hands to his throat and struck out savagely. The dog slashed at his hand, and Joe rolled over and came to his feet. He kicked out at the dog and missed him and then saw Chet Avery standing there.

  Behind Avery, racing for them, were half a dozen men.

  Shotten forgot his gun then and looked at Avery. Solid, stocky, his face blazing with fury, Chet Avery faced him, and there was murder in his eyes.

  “Damn you, Shotten, get off this place!” Avery said in a thick voice.

  “What did I do?” Shotten protested.

  Sweet was the first to arrive. He hauled up, looking at Avery and then at the girl, who was kneeling by the dog, holding him and crying.

  “What’d he do?” Sweet demanded.

  Avery didn’t hear him. He kept looking at Shotten, and his face was contorted with rage. “If you ever speak to her again, Shotten, I’ll kill you. Get off this place now and stay off!”

  Sweet said thinly, “Can’t even let a decent girl alone, can you, Shotten?”

  “I never—” Shotten began.

  Sweet stepped up to him and slapped his face once with his palm, once with the back of his hand. “I don’t know why we don’t string you, you damned cheap tinhorn killer. Listen to me. Are you listening?”

  Shotten didn’t answer, didn’t dare to. He knew these men hated him and he knew it would take very little to make them do just what Sweet had threatened.

  “You get on your horse,” Sweet said slowly, “and ride out of this country. Get out! If we see you here again we’ll hunt you down like we would a sheepherder. Get out!”

  Shotten stooped and picked up his greasy Stetson and put it on without dusting it off. He was too afraid to be angry, and beyond his fear was the dull throb of his aching tooth. Avery’s blow hadn’t helped it.

  He went out to the corral, followed by the others. In silence they watched him saddle his horse and mount.

  Sweet said thinly, “You got till sundown.”

  Shotten rode north out of the place, past the bunkhouse and the shack. The farther away from Sweet he got, the more his sullen fury mounted. So they’d kick him out of the country! Wait till Riling heard that, and they’d sing a different tune.

  And then his tooth began to ache in earnest. Avery’s blow had caught him on the side of the jaw with near bone-smashing force, and it seemed to fan into fire the spark that Garry’s blow had lighted. It was a real ache now, crowding out all other thoughts, all other awareness, even anger, except at it. He’d have to have it pulled and after that he could find Riling.

  He lined out for Sun Dust on the wagon road, and pure and exquisite misery rode with him. It was near dusk when he came in off the flats to Sun Dust, pressing a chew of sodden tobacco against his tooth with his hand. His eyes were bleak, misery filled, and he stopped the first man he saw and asked, “
Where can I get a tooth pulled?”

  “Doc Hogan, above Miller’s saddle shop.”

  Shotten put his horse downstreet. Passing the sheriff’s office, he saw a horse that he thought he recognized. The pain was rioting through his jaw now, but he pulled up, having a hard time concentrating. And then it came to him. It was Riling’s pony.

  But he went on. Not even a session with Riling was more important than this tooth. He dismounted at the saddle shop and climbed the outside stairs that lifted to the second story. He entered a musty waiting room and knocked on the inner door. A gray-haired, roly-poly little man listened to his story and waved him in.

  Joe Shotten then spent fifteen of the worst minutes of his life and proved to himself and several people down on the street that he was not a stoic. Doc Hogan found that the tooth was broken, and its extraction necessitated a minor operation. Shotten first groaned, then yelled, and when the actual extraction took place he came close to screaming.

  Afterward he sat limp in the straight chair that Doc had pulled to the window for the last light and gazed stupidly down at the street. He was wet with sweat and shaking like a foundered horse, but the pain had stopped. He didn’t mind the even hurting now; it was gentle compared with the skull-lifting throb that had been with him all afternoon.

  Presently he paid the doctor off and went out, holding a dirty neckerchief to his mouth. At the top of the steps he found that he’d have to pause a moment for rest if his knees weren’t going to buckle.

  He was standing there, overlooking the street, when he saw Lufton pass. The Blockhouse owner was riding leisurely down the street abreast another rider. A pair of punchers followed them, and still another brace followed the pair. They looked dusty, and since they were heading downstreet, Shotten assumed they had just come off the rim from the Bench.

  Curiosity replaced self-pity now. He descended the steps and tramped down the plank sidewalk a little behind the last rider, trying to see the horse’s brand in that fading light.

  And then he saw Lufton pull into the tie rail in front of the sheriff’s office. Lufton sat his seat a moment, regarding the horse next to his own. That horse, Shotten could see, was still Riling’s.