The Black Muldoon Read online

  He tied his chestnut to the nearest stall. Then he stripped saddle and bridle from it and held the lantern close. The knees of the chestnut were trembling.

  “I thought so,” said Bristol to himself. He ran his fingers under the belly of the horse and found the muscles drawn hard. The gelding was badly gaunted by the long labor it had passed through.

  He took wisps of hay and fell to work, laboring earnestly until the horse was dry and glowing. Then he put out the lantern, left the barn, and went back to the house.

  The girl was still in the kitchen. He looked through the dining-room window and saw an elderly man in his shirtsleeves reading a newspaper.

  He held the edges of the sheets between thumb and finger of one hand and between the first two fingers of the right hand, for the good reason that his right hand lacked a thumb. By the red of the scar, Bristol judged that the wound was not many years old.

  He went to the door that opened from the dining room onto the little, black veranda.

  “Come in,” said a voice.

  He pulled open the door and stepped in.

  The girl came to the open door of the kitchen and looked at him. “Hello,” she said.

  “Take off your coat and sit down,” said the elderly man.

  Bristol had pulled off his hat, and the water from it leaked in rapid drops onto the floor.

  “I’ve tied a horse in your barn out there,” he said. “Is that all right?”

  “Sure, it’s all right,” said the host.

  He stood up and extended his thumbless hand. Bristol took it.

  “I’m Joe Graney. Here’s my girl, Margaret.”

  “I’m Jimmy Bristol.” He waited for that name to take effect, like an acid, but there was no shadow of a response on their faces—merely a polite interest. He shook hands with the girl, too, and saw that her eyes were pure, unwatered blue. She used them not like a pretty girl, reaching for admiration, but straight and true, as a man does who knows what hard work means. And she, like a man, measured his height, his shoulders, his weight.

  These are honest people, he thought to himself, and he felt a little uneasy.

  Graney was ordering him to sit down, telling the girl to put some food on the stove.

  But Bristol said: “Never mind. I had two platters of hotcakes in a town not more’n eight or ten miles back.”

  “Richtown?” asked Graney.

  “I don’t know the name.”

  Graney took off his spectacles and looked at his guest, not offensively, but with open curiosity. “You say you didn’t know the name?”

  “I was passing through fast,” said Bristol. He hung his slicker on a nail. Water still ran down from it to the floor as Bristol sat down. “I’ll go out and tuck myself up in the hay,” he suggested.

  “There’s an extra bed here in the house,” said the girl.

  “Sure. You’ll sleep in here,” said Graney. “Won’t you take a cup of coffee?”

  Bristol shook his head. He felt more uneasy than ever. It seemed to him that these people would hardly be able to afford even as much as a cup of coffee to a stranger. The house was clean, so were the clothes they wore, but faded and patched to the last degree. Good people who had fallen in the world, who had missed their chances. He half wished that he had ridden on and left the place, for he could feel a silent and insistent demand being made on his conscience.

  He asked suddenly: “Look here … not long ago those barns were filled with hay.”

  “How long ago would you say?” asked Graney.

  “Two years. I saw the bits of hay high up on the sides of the walls. And the spiders hadn’t built many cobwebs. Those barns have been in use not so long ago.”

  “No, it’s just two years,” admitted Graney. “Two years ago Dirk van Wey stepped in, and everything stepped off the place except the two of us.” He smiled faintly and nodded.

  “Who’s Dirk van Wey?” asked Bristol.

  “Dirk van Wey? You don’t know him?”

  “I come from pretty far south,” said Bristol.

  “Dirk van Wey,” said the girl, “liked the look of Kennisaw Gap and decided to settle in it two years ago. But he didn’t like to have neighbors too close to him. So little by little our cows began to wander off … hundreds of ’em. There’s only a handful left now. And when they’re gone, I suppose that we’ll move along, just as Dirk wants us to.”

  “No,” said Graney calmly, steadily. “You know that I’ll never move along, Margie. I’ll eat grass first.”

  “Van Wey is a rustler, is he?” asked Bristol.

  “Van Wey is anything that makes money without work.”

  The lips of Bristol twitched, and not with mirth. He felt the eyes of the girl on his face and knew that she had seen him wince.

  “Van Wey,” said Graney, “lives in an old house of ours up in the gap, and there he’ll stay, like an eagle on a rock, king of everything in sight.”

  “Why doesn’t the sheriff take a hand with him?” asked Bristol.

  “One sheriff did, and he never came back. Then a deputy sheriff took a big posse up there. They found the house empty. They scattered through the woods and the rocks. And three of them never came back. Since then, hunting down van Wey hasn’t been popular. Eh, Margie?”

  The girl did not answer. Instead, she remarked: “You’re tired. You’d better go to bed. I’ll show you the room.”

  She led the way before Bristol, when he had said good night to the broken rancher, and ushered him into a small room that had a clean rug on the floor, a bed of enameled iron, and the first big mirror he had seen in three months. She pulled back the curtains and opened the window.

  Outside, the rain had stopped, but he could hear the crinkling sound of the soil, still drinking.

  “Look,” said Bristol. “Is anything going to be done about van Wey?”

  “Nothing,” said the girl.

  “And your father’s going to stay here with his lost cause?”

  “It’s a horse that keeps him here. I’ll tell you in the morning, if you want to know. Good night. Sleep well.” She smiled at him from the door and closed it softly after her.

  She sees through me, he said to himself. And he sat down in a chair with his head bowed, regardless of the clammy cold that began to steal slowly through him from his wet clothes.

  IV

  In the gray of the morning, Jimmy Bristol was at the barn, where he found the chestnut in a cold sweat, with knees still trembling. He rubbed down the horse again, but it was clearly folly to take the gelding out for another journey that day.

  He stood for a time in the doorway of the barn, looking across the great tangle of fencing, wondering how many hundreds of cattle could be worked with ease with such accommodations. Then he went back to the house, remembering every step of the way that Tom Denton, although he might be a fat sheriff, had the lean legs of a good rider. And how long might it be before Sheriff Tom Denton picked up his trail?

  When he came to the house, he found the girl up, with a white streaking of smoke in the kitchen air. The half-thin, half-choking smell of burned paper dominated. But the stove was already humming. The draft was open. The chimney trembled with the strength of the flames that were shaking their heads inside it. And Margaret Graney was swiftly rolling out a slab of biscuit dough. He went out to the woodpile, split some chunks into size for the firebox, and brought the load back to fill the woodbox. Then he retired to the pump, filled the granite wash basin, washed, and shaved.

  He came inside once more with a face somewhat red and tender from the quick work with the razor, and leaning in the kitchen door, he said: “Let’s have it, will you?”

  She was cutting out the biscuits, dipping the round cutter in flour every time. Then she began to lay the limp little rounds of dough rapidly in the greased pan.

  “It’s not a long yarn,” she said. “Father was doing well with everything until two years ago, when Dirk van Wey appeared and asked to rent the old house in the gap. He took the
house, but of course, he never paid the rent. It’s his headquarters for his gang of thieves. They’ve cleaned out Father, but he won’t leave.”

  “There was something about a horse, too,” Bristol suggested.

  “Father had bought a stallion called Pringle, a long, drawn-out, shambly sort of a creature to look at, but Pringle can carry weight all day long and go like the wind. Father’s idea was to build up the quality of the horse herd for the ranch. He wanted them all half-bred, or three-quarter-bred, or still better. He was ambitious. That was just before van Wey came, and of course, Pringle was the very first animal that Dirk van Wey stole from us. And the thought of Pringle sticks in the mind of Father. He doesn’t mind so much the empty barns and corrals. He doesn’t mind the loss of the thumb that one of Dirk’s men shot off a year ago. It’s the loss of Pringle that really matters.”

  Joe Graney came out—smiling, cheerful—and talked until breakfast was ready about deer hunting in the gap. But all during breakfast Jimmy Bristol was silent, trying to lift from his mind the weight that lay redoubled upon it every time he looked at Margaret Graney. She had the calmness of one who understands. And he felt that above all, she understood Jimmy Bristol and had put him down for a rascal.

  So he said suddenly, at the end of the meal: “Give me the right, and let me ride up through the gap and try to get Pringle and the back rent.”

  “Yeah, and that would be a joke,” murmured Graney. “A whole posse has tried that trick, partner!”

  “Crowds are not much good with fellows like Dirk van Wey,” said Jimmy Bristol. “But let me try my own hand and my own shuffle with him, will you? I’ll have to trade my chestnut horse for your brown one to get there. That’s all.”

  He saw the girl frown, very faintly, and saw her eyes look with warning at her father. And, for that matter, it was true that the chestnut was a stolen horse; so were all the horses that he had ridden during the last three months, except the first one, the best one of all. As for Graney, he seemed more irritated than suspicious by the offer, as though it angered him to have a young braggart attempt the impossible.

  “You start now, if you want to,” said Graney, frowning.

  Yet it was chiefly to escape the cold, clear eyes of the girl that Bristol hurried from the table. There was neither disgust nor contempt in her face, but an amused understanding that was more humiliating than anything else could have been. It made Jimmy Bristol want to slay armies or cleave mountains. And always that newly awakened sense of guilt worked like a poison in him.

  In two minutes, Bristol sat on the brown mustang before the small ranch house, waving good-bye to the faint smile of the girl and the gloomy frown of Graney, then he turned and rode over the wet hills toward Kennisaw Gap, an axe cleft between Kennisaw Mountain and Downey Peak.

  He found a creek lined with cottonwoods, and the valley lifted to lodgepole pines, then to big trees, until he came into the gap itself. It was a place of the utmost confusion. Vast boulders had dropped from the mountainsides above, and here and there were groves and clusters of big yellow pines, to show that the soil was deep and good. Through the middle ran a trickle of water, flashing and dodging here and there among the rocks. That lonely mountain quiet gave him second thoughts. He camped for half the day, telling himself he was a fool to go on. But in the late afternoon he was in the saddle again.

  Bristol heard the occasional tinkling of a bell, the sound growing louder and louder. Then he saw a scattering of sheep, but not the goat or the wether that carried the bell, when a voice said, close beside him: “Hello, partner.”

  He turned and saw a little man seated in the lap of a great rock that offered a natural seat. He was a fellow of middle age, wearing old, battered leather chaps, and he had a rifle across his knees. His face was very thin and brown, but he had the smooth brow of a mountaineer, as distinguished from the puckered forehead and the squinting eyes of a man of the desert.

  “Hello,” said Jimmy Bristol, reining in his horse. “Looking for something?” He nodded toward the rifle.

  “Yeah. Wolves … and coyotes,” said the other. “Seen any?”

  “You’re the shepherd, eh?”

  “That’s me. The doggone coyotes, they’ll be down among the rocks and trees trying to sneak a lamb if they get a chance. The coyotes make more trouble than the wolves.”

  “You’re the shepherd, eh?” repeated Jimmy Bristol, hooking his right leg over the horn of the saddle and making a cigarette.

  “Yeah. What are you, brother?”

  “I’m an ace full on a pair of kings,” said Jimmy Bristol, smiling gently.

  The little man did not smile, however. “That’s a pretty big hand,” he said, “but you can lose money on it in some games.”

  “It takes four of a kind to beat it,” answered Bristol.

  “They can be found, brother … they can be found,” said the shepherd. “Did I see a streak of yellow over there?” He stood up, the rifle at the ready.

  And, turning his head a little, Jimmy Bristol actually saw the yellow-gray fur of a coyote as it flashed among the rocks, some fifty yards away. “There’s a coyote over there,” agreed Bristol.

  “There’s more’n one coyote in this gap,” said the other man. “And they know how to use cover and sneak up close on the sheep, too, day or night. There …”

  He jerked the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The coyote, either that which Bristol had just seen or another, had appeared suddenly on top of a rock that was not far off. It had barely pointed its head into the wind when it saw the flash of the rifle. At the clang of the gun, it made a leap into the air and, landing, sprang for safety among the boulders.

  This had taken a full second, perhaps, and a full second was a very long time for Jimmy Bristol. His revolver exploded. The coyote twisted sidewise in the air and disappeared.

  “That was pretty smooth,” said the little man, calmly as ever. “Maybe you been up here in the gap before?”

  “No. It’s my first trip,” answered Jimmy Bristol. “But I like the scenery and the air. I wouldn’t mind staying a while in this sort of a neck of the woods.”

  The little man walked away among the rocks and came back carrying by the scruff of the neck the limp body of a dead coyote.

  “Right behind the shoulder,” he said. “You nailed him clean. He didn’t suffer any. He must have died in the air. Want the skin?”

  “No,” said Jimmy Bristol. “I’m heading for Dirk van Wey’s place. Know where it is?”

  The other stared earnestly at him. “You know Dirk van Wey?” he asked at last.

  “By reputation. Not by sight.”

  “There’s quite a lot to know about him, take him either way. Well, I’m about ready to go in. I’ll take the skin off this coyote and go in with you and show you the way. I’ll introduce you.”

  Bristol did not offer to help in the skinning of the dead coyote. There was little need, for the mountaineer seemed to know perfectly how the skin was fitted over the supple body, and the edge of his knife seemed to have eyes and a separate sense of touch. All in a moment the skin was off, and the slender, naked, little carcass lay on the ground, white streaked with slashes of red.

  The pelt was folded, the knife cleaned, and the man of the rifle walked away, with Bristol riding behind him.

  “What about the sheep and the coyotes?” asked Bristol.

  “What about ’em? The coyotes’ll keep away when they see their pal lying dead there. What’s your moniker, brother?”

  “Bristol. Jim Bristol. Who are you?”

  “I’m Dan Miller.”

  “Been in the sheep business a long time?”

  “Quite a spell.”

  “That’s what I guessed,” said Bristol, “by the look of the chaps.”

  Dan Miller turned his sharp, brown face and spoke over his shoulder. “It’s easy to see too much up here,” he said gravely.

  “Because of the altitude, eh?” asked Jimmy Bristol.

  “Yes,” said Dan Mi
ller. “A lot of fellows get up here and find it so high that they think they can see over the whole world, pretty near.”

  “That must make ’em dizzy,” suggested Bristol.

  “It does,” said Miller. “And a lot of ’em get bad falls, too.”

  After these cryptic remarks, he led the way through a tangle of trees and rocks until they came out suddenly into a clearing, where a rambling house of rough-stone masonry and logs stood beside a blue pool, into which the sunset was beginning to drop embers of red and gold. A big spruce grew before the house, and under the tree stood a table built up from the ground, meant to stay there in all weather. Tin plates and cups had been laid out on it, and one man already sat at the head of the board. On a blanket in front of the door of the house sat a broken-nosed, swarthy fellow rolling dice with a handsome, golden-haired youth of twenty.

  That pair at the side would have taken the eye ordinarily, but they were nothing compared with the fellow who sat at the table. Dark by nature and still darker from exposure to all weather, he sat with his great arms folded on top of the table, the might of his shoulders thrown loosely forward, and in the wide slit of his mouth, a pipe was gripped savagely, as though he intended to bite through the stem at once.

  That was the air of him, at once brooding, and ready for instant action. There was such a bright spark in his eyes that Jimmy Bristol could hardly conceive of eyelids that could cover and shut out entirely that uneasy light.

  Dan Miller, the pair who rolled the dice, the ragged old cabin, the big mountains around them, the flaming western sky, all became a blank before the mind of Jimmy Bristol, and he saw only the face of this man.

  It was Dirk van Wey; he knew at once.

  “Here’s a fellow wants to see you,” said Dan Miller. “He’s by name of Jimmy Bristol … and he snagged a coyote down the way. I missed with a rifle, and he snagged it with his Colt.”

  “That’s the right kind of a Colt to have,” said the big man at the table.

  “Hello, Mister van Wey,” said Bristol, and held out his hand.