CHAPTER VIII—GETTING DOWN TO CASES
Under his ready laugh and effervescent smile, Charlie Shaw gave the impression of entire competence. The downright self-reliance demanded by the range of all who would pass muster in its service, was quite apparent to Rock. In a cow camp a man was judged by the way he carried himself, and what he could do, rather than his years. Charlie had been giving Nona an account of things on round-up. Apparently he had just ridden in. He nodded to Rock and went on with his talk. Rock sat down beside them to roll a cigarette.
“I know within a dozen head how many unbranded calves are scattered around here,” Nona said finally. “We had an open winter. We should have at least seventy or eighty more calves than last year. Yet the tally is less.”
“The range is covered to the last fringe,” Charlie stated. “They’ll make a few more rides, but they won’t show much. I don’t savvy it either, Nona, but that’s the count.”
“How did the Cross come out on their calf crop?” she inquired.
“Nobody knows but Buck. I wouldn’t ask him.”
The girl stared at the porch floor for a second, frowning.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “There ought to be more calves than that.”
Charlie didn’t comment. After a minute she got up and went inside. Shaw looked at Rock smoking in silence.
“Say, old-timer,” he remarked abruptly, but in a discreet undertone, “there’s some whisperin’ about you in the Maltese Cross outfit.”
“Yes?” Rock became alert. “What do they whisper? And who’s whispering?”
“I don’t know who started it,” Charlie said. “I heard it the first day you rode in with me and Alice Snell and Joe Bishop. I don’t like to repeat gabble, but seems to me you’d ought know.”
“Shoot!” Rock smiled.
“It’s just a whisper,” Charlie mumbled seriously. “Nobody said a word to me direct. I just overheard here and there. They say you’re rustlin’.”
“Me—rustling?” Rock perked up in astonishment. For the moment he forgot his assumed identity. The idea was so utterly ludicrous. He laughed. Recollection sobered him. This must be more Martin history.
“Ye’ah. Got you hooked up with them Burris boys over behind the Goosebill,” Charlie murmured. “Talkin’ about rawhide neckties. Some of them Texicans in Buck’s crew are bad hombres, Doc.”
Rock knitted his brows. He hadn’t heard before of the Burris boys. The Goosebill he had seen only as an oddshaped hill standing blue on the southwestern sky line, halfway between the Marias and Fort Benton.
“Well, you reckon I’ve been draggin’ the long rope in my spare time and should be a candidate for their kind attentions?” he asked.
Shaw snorted.
“I might ’a’ known you’d make a joke of it,” he complained.
“I wonder who wants to get me so bad as that?” Rock said under his breath.
“Buck Walters, of course,” Charlie returned promptly. “Who else? Just like his damn left-hand ways. Didn’t you never figure he’d shoot at you over somebody else’s shoulder? As a matter of fact, I’m satisfied Buck aims to get you.”
“Why?”
“Say, you know why well enough,” Charlie blurted irritably. “You been flirtin’ with the undertaker all spring. You ain’t a fool.”
“You mean Alice Snell?” Rock hazarded a guess.
“Sure.” Charlie looked at him out of narrowed eyes, the bright blue of which held a peculiar gleam, whether of friendship or disapproval Rock could not tell from the boy’s otherwise impassive face. No; not disapproval; merely the recollection of something unpleasant, either in the past or threatening in the future. This capable youngster was by no means an open book. “I wouldn’t yeep, only to give you a hint to step soft. Buck’s mean. He’ll make trouble. Nona’s had a hard enough row to hoe. Long as we draw wages from her, we got to do the best we can for her. The TL ain’t so popular as it used to be with the Maltese Cross.”
“Account of me?” Rock inquired.
“I don’t know,” Charlie said frankly. “I’ve told you all I know. That talk about rustlin’ an’ hangin’ parties was meant for me to hear. Savvy?”
Rock didn’t, but he nodded. His brows wrinkled deeply. The solution finally came to him. To make a decision with him was to act.
“Do you recollect asking me where I got that riding rig?” he asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“I’ll tell you in a minute. Meantime I want to show you something.” He rose. “Come on in!”
Charlie followed him into the kitchen.
“Will you open up that room?” Rock asked Nona. “The one where that stuff is we put away?”
“Why——” She stopped short. Something on the faces of the two men checked the question on her lips. Silently she took a key out of a drawer and walked into the hall, the narrow passage that divided the house. She opened a door—the only locked door in all those log-walled rooms.
“You better come in,” Rock said.
“Charlie’s got to know. You better tell him.”
A window from the south let sunlight into the room. A bed long unslept in stood against one wall. On the floor lay a saddle, bridle, a pair of black, Angora-faced chaps, and a pair of silver-inlaid spurs. Beside them a pair of worn riding boots, a brown calfskin belt full of .45 cartridges, and in the holster a plain, black-handled Colt. On a nail above hung a man’s felt hat. A canvas war bag lay across a chair, stuffed with the dead man’s belongings.
Rock pointed to the saddle. On the yellow leather a stain lay black like dried paint.
“Do you know that rig?” he asked. “Do you see that smear? That’s blood.”
“Well?” The boy looked at the dead man’s outfit in puzzled wonder. He looked at Nona Parke and back again at Rock. “Well?” he repeated. “I see it. What’s it all about?”
“Am I Doc Martin or not?” Rock asked softly.
“Are you crazy?” Charlie demanded. “What are you getting at? Who do you think you are? Have you gone loco?”
“Tell him,” Rock commanded the girl.
“Doc is dead,” she whispered. “He was shot from ambush a week ago yesterday.”
Nona Parke’s cowpuncher looked at her unbelievingly. She gave him details, chapter and verse, describing that tragic afternoon, Rock’s coming, and the burial at sunrise.
“That’s all,” she said wearily. “You can see his grave beside dad and mamma.”
“Poor old Doc,” Shaw muttered. He looked at Rock with new interest. “I wouldn’t ’a’ believed it if she hadn’t told me. You’re the dead spit of him. You talk like him. Only, you seemed a little different, some way, from what Doc used to be.”
“Come on into the bunk room,” Rock invited. “Let’s try to get down to cases.”
“Has anything happened?” Nona asked sharply.
“Gosh, no,” Rock equivocated. “Nothing at all. I wanted this kid to know how things stand, though. I couldn’t go on and not tip my hand, for fear he’d think there was something queer about me.”
“Probably it’s best,” Nona agreed. “Supper will be ready in a few minutes. Charlie has to ride back to the round-up. I’ll call you.”
“All right.”
They turned out of the hall into the huge room where Rock slept. Side by side, they sat on a bed that seemed lost in that empty space, where forgotten riders had clanked their spurs and joked and told stories through long winter nights, while the fireplace roared.
“Now you see where I stand,” Rock said. “I’m having a dead man’s troubles wished on me. Tell me just how Doc Martin stood with Alice Snell, and why Buck Walters had his knife out for Doc.”
“That’s simple,” the boy answered. “This blond dulce was soft on Doc—crazy about him. I don’t blame you. Darn it, I keep thinkin’ of you as Doc Martin. I can’t get it that he’s cashed in.”
“You can see how hard it is for me to make any one believe I’m not Doc,” Rock observed.
“Hell, yes. They’d have to have it proved. They’d laugh and think you were trying to put it over ’em.”
“Were you and Doc friends?” Rock asked. He wanted to know where this boy stood.
“I liked Doc,” the boy said simply. “He showed me lots of things. He was kinda high-handed with anybody he didn’t like. But he was darned good to me. Doc was a white man.”
“No chance of him being mixed up in anything underhanded?”
Charlie Shaw snorted disdainfully, which was explicit enough answer for Rock.
“Go on, tell me about Alice Snell and Doc—and Buck Walters,” he prompted.
“Buck’s the fly in the ointment.” Charlie frowned. “As I said, I don’t blame Doc for playin’ up to Alice. She’s a mighty sweet-lookin’ girl. Only——”
“I gathered somehow,” Rock filled in the pause, “that the late Doc was pretty sweet on Nona Parke. So much so, that he was jealous of any man that paid her much attention, and that he got himself in wrong with Elmer Duffy over that.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But Nona don’t want nothin’ of a man except that he be a good stock hand around her outfit. Sure, Doc thought a heap of her. So do I. But not the way he did. Even if he got to consolin’ hisself with Alice, I expect he still felt like protectin’ Nona from fellers like Duffy. Elmer ain’t such a much. I’d be inclined to horn off fellers like Duffy, myself. An’ I’m not stuck on Nona. Me ’n’ Doc worked for her two years, off ’n’ on. She’s been like a sister to me. She’s game as they make ’em. Darned few girls would have the nerve to run this one-horse show the way she’s done. I’d rather have her for a boss than anybody I know.”
There was a sincerity in this stumbling, embarrassed declaration that Rock admired. But he was still on the trail of the unknown, and he quizzed Shaw further.
“This Snell girl’s of age. She’s rich. I guess she’s been spoiled. Always had her own way about anythin’. She come up here last summer, first time. Come back again this spring. Took a dickens of a shine to Doc and didn’t hide it much. Everybody in the country knows it, except Nona. She ain’t got eyes nor ears for anything but her ranch and her cattle. An’ Buck Walters is crazy about this Snell girl, himself, though she has no use for him. She told Doc once that she’d can Buck off the Maltese Cross if her dad hadn’t made him an administrator of his will. I don’t know if there was anythin’ definite between Doc an’ Alice. I do know Buck has turned to hatin’ you—Doc I mean—like poison, lately. His eyes burn whenever your name comes up. That’s why I said he aims to get you—get Doc. Darn it, I keep gettin’ you all mixed up.”
“Better go on thinkin’ of me as Doc Martin,” Rock suggested, “until something breaks. I’m interested in this. Listen, now, Charlie: Do you remember where the Maltese Cross was a week ago yesterday—the day Doc was shot? Were they in easy reach of the Marias? Do you recollect if Buck Walters was missing that afternoon?”
“I know where we were,” Charlie said. “Couldn’t say for sure whether Buck was early or late off circle that afternoon. Anyhow, I’m here to tell you that he wouldn’t be likely to do his own bushwhackin’. Too foxy for that. He’s got at least half a dozen riders in his outfit that’d kill a man for two bits—especially if Buck told ’em to.”
“Got something on ’em, I suppose,” Rock suggested.
“Maybe; I don’t know. I know he’s got some hard citizens in his crew. None of ’em has made a crooked move since they come to Montana, but they got ‘Killer’ written all over ’em. There’s two fellers that never ride with the round-up. They hang around the home ranch all the time, foolin’ with horses. They got a name down South. A rider in Benton told me their history last fall.”
“I see. Buck Walters has a lot of hard pills on his pay roll.” Rock nodded. “Not because they’re such good range hands, eh? Most cowpunchers aren’t killers—not by choice or for money. Now, why do you reckon he keeps men like that around, Charlie?”
But all Shaw could answer was a shake of his head and a muttered, “Search me.”
“It would sort of seem as if Buck kept a crowd around that would burn powder free and easy, if the play came up,” Rock mused. “Consequently, he must expect something to break. What would it likely be? A cow outfit don’t have to fight for nothin’ in this country.”
And again Charlie Shaw shook his blond, youthful head.
“He wouldn’t surround himself with bad men from Bitter Creek, waiting for their night to howl, just to deal with Doc Martin for shining up to a girl he has his mind on.”
“No; because he brought most of his crowd up from the South with him,” Charlie answered. “But he’ll put your light out, just the same, if he gets a good chance.”
“Doc Martin has already had his light put out,” Rock said.
“I keep forgettin’,” the boy muttered. “If I was you I’d advertise that fact pronto. It ain’t healthy to be in Doc Martin’s shoes around here.”
“I have a notion to fill ’em for a while, just to see what comes of it,” Rock said slowly. “You’re sure Buck Walters had it in for Doc over this girl—and nothing else?”
“Nothing else that I know of,” Shaw said.
Something in the boy’s tone made that denial unconvincing and warned Rock that there was more in Charlie Shaw’s mind than he would utter.
“Do you suppose there was something that Doc Martin knew or had found out or suspected, that would make Buck want him out of the way?”
Shaw stared at Rock for a minute, as if trying to fathom his purpose—as if he were suspicious of subtleties beyond his understanding.
“I can’t answer for what Doc might have known. All I know is that I’m a Parke rider, and I don’t aim to horn into nothin’ that don’t concern me nor the outfit I ride for—nor my friends.”
“I’m a TL rider, too,” Rock said pointedly. “I aim to be as good a hand, if not better, to the outfit I work for as any rider that ever forked a cayuse. Even if you don’t know anything positive, Charlie, you could tell me what you think about Buck Walters.”
“I might tell you when I know you better,” the boy said bluntly. “A man that wags his tongue too free is a fool. I’ve told you what I know. It ain’t important what I think.”
Rock gave him credit for a wisdom beyond his years and did not press the matter. He had taken a liking to this slender, smiling youth. Charlie was good stuff—that curious mixture of which all good range men were made—loyalty, courage and a rude dignity. And he was damnably efficient. The boy had an eye like an eagle and a discerning, practical mind. He knew or suspected far more than he would ever admit to any one he didn’t know inside out and could trust implicitly. He would have told things to Doc Martin that he would only reveal to Rock Holloway when Rock had demonstrated that he was all wool and a yard wide.
Nona called them presently to supper. They ate, then smoked a cigarette on the porch. Charlie Shaw strolled off to the stable, mounted and rode away to rejoin the Maltese Cross. While Rock sat on the edge of the porch, pondering on what he had learned, Nona joined him. She leaned against a log pillar, looking absently out across the river flats. Rock watched her. She was so young, so utterly free from self-consciousness, so intent upon her own purposes. Something about her warmed his heart. It wasn’t beauty, as Alice Snell was beautiful. It was an air, an atmosphere, something indefinable, subtle, but very powerful, like the invisible force in a bit of bent steel that draws other bits of steel to itself.
“I want you to take a wagon and go to Fort Benton to-morrow,” she said abruptly, “and see if you can hire a couple of men for haying. We’ve got to get up a couple of hundred tons of hay for next winter.”
Rock smiled. He had been brooding over life and death, treachery and broken faith, loyalty in unexpected phases, the mystery of passion that bred hatred and bloody clashes. Nona had been thinking of hay for her stock.
Each to his own thoughts. He envied her a little and admired her for that simplicity, the directness of her faith and works. His own mental groping and convolutions would have distressed her, no doubt.