That was what Rafe thought.
"I ought to be bored for the simples!" he snarled, and hauled up Bathsheba in a slash of wild cursing. Any guy not ready for a string of spools should be able to see what that banker was up to with a woman in the game and the stakes big as these was. All Chilton had to do was set back and wait till Rafe or some other mushhead like him got the skids knocked out from under that foreman. He wouldn't even have to shake the dang tree! Just flatter the girl or threaten foreclosure and the whole shebang would fall right in his lap!
Rafe scowled something awful, thinking he ought to cut his string, too proud to whip out his knife to do it. He had a nagging hunch he was plumb on the threshold of times so parlous they could lose a man every tooth in his head, then beat him over the butt with a broomstick. Women and Yankees! Goddlemighty!
Yet to run in blind panic wouldn't help a heap, either. Not knowing the country how far would he get up against guys like Pike and that conniving dang banker? Both of 'em pecking more pull, probably, than a twenty-mule borax team!
Pride was fine, but it made a poor supper. Why, he didn't even know these crazy dang people! No skin off his nose if, after he got this Spangler off their backs, Chilton shoved 'em right out in the catclaw. Nobody'd appointed Rafe Bender their keeper!
Though he'd never admit it, Rafe, deep down, was a pretty decent sort. He might stick up a stage when the going got rough, even whittle a steak off somebody's cow, but the kind of deal Alph Chilton was up to looked a pretty hard thing for a man to have to live with. Mighty near bad as skinning a orphan. About as low down as a feller could get.
The whole thing gave him a kind of mental indigestion, fetching his convictions up so harsh against his needs. He didn't have to be told he was in a real bind, and he was no more anxious to get the dirt spaded over him than anybody else. A Johnny Reb could find himself powerful quick dead playing tick-tack-toe with these greedy Yank carpetbaggers.
Rafe growled and swore and sighed again. Trying to be a Christian was sure as hell a full-time job! Everybody these days was looking out for Number One. If a gent wasn't able to blow his own nose he'd likely wait a long time for someone else to do it.
He kneed Bathsheba up the trail. Juniper fled into scrub oak and piñon. Grass clumps began to show among the pear and Spanish bayonet and the land leveled off into rolling swells. Prairie chickens thrummed out of the thickets. A road-runner scuttled through the grain heavy stems of green-bladed feed and the mare came into a meadow that was just like something straight out of a dream.
Despite Alph Chilton's detailed directions Rafe could hardly believe this oasis was real. Just like in McGuffy's Reader! Green stretching every place. The soft gurgle of water drew his glance to the creek and Bathsheba, impatient, broke through a trembling screen of willows and, wading into the flow, put her head down to drink.
Rafe put together a smoke. Must be close onto forty acres, and alfalfa at that! Pulling the good smell of it deep inside him he dragged the quirly across his tongue, firing up. There hadn't been such a sight since old Jim Wolf lost his pants in a snowdrift.
Off yonder the tops of a dozen great cottonwoods threshed in the breeze whipping down off the mountains. The whirling blades of a mill fetched his look to the flat roofs of buildings over beyond a far tangle of pens.
He reckoned this layout was the sure-enough headquarters of the old Ortega grant—Gourd and Vine they was calling it now according to what Alph Chilton had told him. A hundred thousand unfenced acres. There had been more but a heap had gone into Ortega marryings and then, in bad times, considerable more had been sold. How this crop of gringos had got hold of it wasn't quite clear.
In fact, now Rafe came to think back, there seemed quite a pile of things the banker hadn't gone into. The only name dropped into their talk had been that of Spangler, the bullypuss range boss Chilton claimed was stealing them blind. Nor had the banker explained how he came to have a lien.
Increasingly uneasy, Rafe watched a rider quit the maze of pens and, circling the buildings, come on at a lope. Pitching aside the remains of his smoke Rafe eased Bathsheba up out of the creek. If that feller hadn't seen him before he certain sure did when Rafe came out of the trees.
Rafe's eyes suddenly narrowed. This galoot coming toward him looked almighty like the slab-sided bustard who'd been leading that bunch Rafe had tried to flag down before he'd wound up in the hands of Grant's bone setter.
The nearer he come the more like him he seemed. Rafe was pretty hard put to keep a rein on his temper. It didn't help none when this guy, even before he'd pulled up, yelled, "What the hell do you think you're doin'?"
His voice was rough as the look on his face. He was big, heavy-set, with great slabs for hands. His chaps-covered legs appeared thick as fence posts. Menace and suspicion peered through slitted eyes as he set up his horse in a slather of grit. "When I ask a man somethin' he damn well better answer!"
Rafe, with both hands over the knob of his saddle, said, "I'm huntin' a job—"
"And I'm a Chinaman's uncle!"
Rafe wasn't going to take issue on that, though he thought to himself the guy looked more like a chimp with his long fat nose and stringy mustache staggling over that steel-trap slit of a mouth. Even his ears stuck out like an ape's and his winkless, red-veined eyes were about as readable as rock. He was certainly a beauty.
This guy said, like he was talking to a fool, "I guess you don't believe in signs. I guess you're one of them as has to be showed—"
"What signs?" Rafe said, and Frozenface got right up in his stirrups like he was more than some minded to take bodily hold of him. Before he could do so another voice said, "What you got there, Jess?"
Frozenface, never for an instant taking his look off Rafe, growled, "Another damn drifter! It's gettin' so a man can't put a foot out of doors without stumblin' over some goddamn saddle bum! I say it's time, by Gawd, we was stringin' up a few!"
"You know the old man wouldn't hold still for that—"
"Who's to tell? A guy with a choke strap round his neck ain't—"
"We don't have to do that. Take his stuff, put him afoot and haze him off into the dunes like you done the rest of them," the newcomer said; and something about the sound, some inflection of his voice, pulled Rafe's face about.
His jaw fell open. "Duck!" he cried with his eyes lighting up, and would have sent Bathsheba straightaway over except that, before he could do it, a gun snout jabbed hard against his ribs. A gate-hinge growl advised, "Set right still if you don't want them guts blowed hell west an' crooked!"
In the whirl and churn of Rafe's confused thoughts there was just enough savvy to understand he was about as close to planting as a man could come and still keep breathing. This dark faced Jess, if that order were ignored, wouldn't hesitate a minute. It was more reflex, however, than any conscious intention that caused Rafe's legs to lock the mare in her tracks. His glance stayed riveted on the handsome dandy in the bottle-green coat, stock and tall beaver hat who, in white cheeked dismay, stared incredulously back.