Chilton, after removing his hat, pushed a box of fat cigars across the shine of his desk and then, while his guest was stowing away half a dozen, fetched out a bottle of fine bourbon and a pair of glasses.
Rafe, surreptitiously pinching himself, picked up the pushed-forward nearest. Cold eyes sparkling above the rim of his lifted own, Chilton proposed, "Your health, young feller, and all that goes with it."
Rafe smacked his lips and, feeling some stronger, gawped around like a bumpkin. The banker evidently lived about as high off the hog as a man in this country was liable to get. Recognition of this brought to mind an old saw having to do with gifts and Greeks. With that jaw, and eyes that would have looked as much to home in one of those moose heads, Chilton's red carpet welcome had a lot more behind it than was being tossed onto the table.
With the stiff-fingered hand Rafe set down his glass. "Not much point chasin' clean around the barn, eh?"
The banker, showing his store teeth, sat back while Rafe fired up. Then he said, leaning forward, "This property I mentioned is being let go to hell. A man's entitled to protect his investment?"
"No argument there. Your bank owns the property?"
"Bank holds the mortgage. Last payment made—and it took care only of interest—was more than a year ago. These payments," Chilton explained, "are due quarterly. Our depositors have—"
"I dunno," Rafe said. "If you're wantin' 'em foreclosed I'd say your best bet's the sheriff."
Chilton snorted. "He won't even go near the place, and his deputy's more scairt of Spangler than he is. To make a long story short what we've got out there is a bunch of damn fools, a family of wastrels. The old man knows stock, and that's all you can say for them. Left alone I expect he could make a real go of it—that's why we loaned him the money. But—"
"How much was that?"
"Thirty thousand."
Rafe whistled. "That spread must take up half the county."
"Takes up enough. An old Spanish grant. First couple of years we didn't have no trouble. Then they took on this Spangler—"
"Who's he?" Rafe cut in.
"Foreman, range boss, whatever you want to call him. I won't try to fool you, he's a plenty rough customer. Old man's been failing—eyes ain't what they used to be. He's fell into the habit of letting Spangler pretty much run things. Spangler's stealing him blind."
Rafe said, "Where do I come in?"
"I don't say it'll be easy; you'll earn every nickel you're going to get out of this." Chilton said confidentially, "You'll be going out there as the bank's representative. You'll look into these losses, do whatever you think's called for."
"Hmmm," Rafe said dubiously.
"You'll draw two hundred a month, and a thousand dollar bonus if you wind this up to the bank's satisfaction. That's a lot of money, mister."
It was a good deal more than Rafe had ever got hold of or ever expected to. "This Spangler," he said, "must be hell on wheels." He got up with a sigh.
"Where you going?" Chilton growled.
"Ain't much doubt where I'd go if I took on that chore."
"You don't have to fire him, if that's what's bothering you. I'm not tying your hands. Work under cover, do it any way you want. There's a girl out there, old man's daughter, wild as a hare." Chilton smiled suggestively.
"I guess not," Rafe said, turning to hide the black leap of his anger.
"Where else can a secesh make that kind of money?"
The banker had something there, but money wasn't everything. Rafe, arriving at the door, grabbed hold of the knob. Chilton said, "Figure you can afford to entertain such fine sentiments?"
Rafe, chewing his lip, glared over a shoulder. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Got the price of that damage you inflicted across the street?"
Rafe bristled. "An' if I haven't?"
"Better think over my offer if you don't want to find yourself headed for Yuma."
Rafe had heard enough about this Arizona country to understand there was mighty little hope for anyone sent there. The Territorial Prison was about all there was to Yuma, and a lot more went there than ever got out. He didn't doubt for an instant Chilton had enough influence to get him committed. Pike was on his mind, too.
The banker showed his dentures. "When a man works for me I take care of him. Now what are you going to do?"
"I don't see that I got much choice," Rafe said bitterly.
IV
The sun, dropping rapidly, was near submerged in reefs of copper cloud stretching mile on mile above the western rim of sight when Rafe, aboard the skewbald, some hours later moved out of a draw and began climbing east through a straggle of stunted juniper and pear. Six weeks grass was the color of straw and hardly came higher than the mare's shaggy pasterns. Directly ahead were the dark scarps of a peak that stood up butter-like straight as a rifle, fiercely red where the light broke across a patchwork of shadows going all the way from pale blue to black. Beyond, shoved up like slabs of gray slate, loomed the spires of the Cherrycows.
Only the mare's shod hoofs and the occasional chirp of a startled bird broke the land's heavy silence that seemed laid up like stones. The brooding quiet held an eerie resentment Rafe could almost taste; and there was in him suddenly a feeling of doors being closed just ahead of him.
A wild and lonesome country, hard to get into and probably harder to get out of if the folks who lived here took a dislike to him, which they very well might if the word got around he was repping for Chilton.
More and more he was tempted to chuck it and run—but run where? And if he did get away what then of the quest that had hauled him half across a continent? Didn't he owe it to his folks to come up with them?
Of course, he'd no real proof they'd ever been in this region. The Old Man never had cottoned to cattle; in a land big as this he'd surely go into horses, or hogs maybe. Or would stubbornness have kept him back of a plow?
A lot of that stubbornness was in Rafe, too. He despised, after putting his shoulder to a wheel, to let it get away from him. Cross-grained as a mule, his old pappy had called him, and it was a heap kinder language than some of the descriptions other folks had flung after him.
Rafe sighed. A powerful lot of water had gone rolling under the bridges since that day he'd quit the Ozarks to join up with the boys in gray. Been a mighty mort of changes.
He guessed a man ought to look for the good in things. He reckoned he wouldn't of been so down on this chore if that banker hadn't told him a girl was tied into it. Danger was something you could learn to run elbows with; but if there was any one thing could really tear a man up it was a woman every time!
He had generally figured to fight clear of them. The times he hadn't was sharp in his head as any memory he'd hung onto. And twice as loud. He could still see the wide-open eyes of that Pike filly peering blue as larkspur across the ugly look of that Greener. And here he was, crowding his luck like any half-baked Boston, a-humping and a-hustling to cram himself neck deep in a deal where Hoyle and logic went straight out the window and the rules, if any, was built to drag smiles from some addlebrained female!