Holt 2, page 4
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Sam laughed, once again acting like she was inside his head. Truth to tell, he had been wondering …
“Time to ride on in and make our introductions.” Sam jerked on the reins of her roan and walked it the rest of the way across the creek.
Holt followed, scowling. Here he was, partnered with this woman in increasingly intricate ways, and he didn’t even know her age.
Like the Brantville ranch, Morgan’s was trim and spruce, the utter opposite of the nearby town where Holt had his recent misadventure. The buildings, however, were given more to utility than finery.
The big house, as a rancher’s headquarters was invariably known, was not really that big, a one-story cabin of chinked logs with a single window aside the hinged plank door. It stood upwind from an extensive feedlot and corral system comprising at least a dozen pens. To one side was a whitewashed barn, to the other several haystacks, one exposed, the others covered with canvas tarp. A ditch cut in from the creek filled a stock tank and watered a kitchen garden gone to weed this late in the season. The remainder of the outpost comprised a bunkhouse, a well pump, a chicken coop, and a privy off away from the water supply.
As they reined up before the cabin, someone behind them said, “Reach for the sky.”
Holt had a healthy distaste for guns on his back, and did as he was told. Sam, however, raised one hand and eased her horse around with the other. When nothing untoward occurred, Holt did the same.
Before the bunkhouse, a woman held a Winchester lever-action aimed in their direction. Somewhere in her twenties, she wore a long gray duster and a Stetson over a mess of cascading blond hair that framed high cheekbones, a well-formed visage, and eyes that shined with a hint of craziness. “State your business,” the woman demanded.
This was Holt’s day for voices behind his back. A new one said, “Stop this nonsense.”
The woman grumbled inaudibly, lowered the rifle, and dug at the barnyard dirt with her boot toe like a petulant child. A man passed their horses, went to her and took the weapon. “She reads them books and gets notions,” he said, which made no particular sense to Holt.
“You’d be Mr. Morgan,” he ventured, although the man did not fit Holt’s preconception. He was dressed slovenly in coveralls and a cloth jacket over a red union suit. Beneath a straw hat, a cigarette dangled from lips surrounded by a weathered face, and Holt thought there was a bit of a drunken roll to his gait.
“I’m Prospect,” the man said. “It’s my brother you seek. Climb down and we’ll search him out.” He waved the woman over. “See to their horses.”
She did as ordered, but not before giving Holt a frank up and down look. “Charity,” she said.
“This way.” Prospect turned for the cabin, trailing a whiff of liquor smell.
As they followed, Holt ducked his head toward Sam and said in a low voice, “Is everyone but me talking in code?”
Sam smiled as Prospect pushed open the door. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll crack it soon enough.”
“‘Ye shall return every man unto his family,’” Stanley Morgan said.
“Leviticus 25:10,” Holt cited.
Morgan looked impressed. “You are a religious man?”
“I’m a man whose primer was the Good Book. My folks moved us around quite a bit, and there wasn’t carrying room for much of a library.”
“Homesteaders? Then you’ve had some ranching experience.”
“Enough to tell one end of a cow from the other,” Holt said.
“Our father was home-tutored as well, and developed a fondness for romance. Thus such names as Prospect and Charity.” He smiled wanly. “My brother fell on hard times, and I took him in.”
Prospect scowled and gravitated toward a shelf below the front window, where a corked bottle of dark liquor was flanked by water tumblers. The interior of Morgan’s cabin was surprisingly capacious. This living room occupied the front two-thirds, and in the back was a bedroom and kitchen side by side. Some attention had been given to homeliness: Line drawings from magazines were tacked to the log walls, a neatly surfaced roll top desk faced the corner where the light was best, and a handmade dining table with six chairs, wooden and straight-backed but cushioned with quilted pillows, sat near to a fat-bellied wood stove. “Miss Charity,” Sam said delicately. “Is she ... ?”
“Dotty?” Morgan said.
“‘Willful’ might be the better adjective, as ‘feckless’ applies to her father, my brother.” Prospect poured himself a drink, the gesture defiant, but Holt was not so interested in Morgan’s familial affairs. “Mr. Brantville said you had work for us.”
A pot sat on the stove, and from it Morgan poured coffee. He set cups on the table. “That is what this interview is about, Mr. Holt.”
Holt kept his expression neutral. It appeared that Teddy Brantville had sent another wire while he and Sam were on the trail. Holt didn’t much like that.
Morgan sat down. “I do need hands,” he said, “but I require other skills as well. I face a threat.”
“Quint,” Holt guessed.
“You’ve met him,” Morgan said, not asking. “I suppose it was he who mashed your nose.”
Holt saved away the comment. “What skills exactly are you seeking in your ranch hands?”
Morgan took some of his coffee. “Some experience with violent ways,” he said.
Holt set his palms on the table. “I have done some chores,” he said, “but I’ve never worked as a hired gun.”
“Hear me out,” Morgan said mildly. “My friend Teddy told me this: you and Miss Lowell wish to find a man who may be among the wolfers. I will give you a base from which to smoke him out, and I will pay you well.”
Sam, who had been observing all this in studied silence, spoke for the first time. “How well?”
“Fifty dollars each per month, for as long as the job takes.”
“That’s a superior price,” Sam said, “but still you’ve not explained what you believe it will purchase.”
Morgan went to the window. “When I came to this country, it was a garden,” he said. “That was after the war, and almost simultaneous with the arrival of Quint.”
The door opened and Charity entered. She took the now-empty coffeepot into the kitchen, while her father readdressed the liquor bottle. Morgan frowned absently at Prospect’s back.
“A minor gold rush brought Quint here, and in its course he established himself,” he said. “He managed to pan several thousand dollars’ worth, which he invested in building his saloon and mercantile. From the beginning, he was associated with shady doings—hijacking helpless pilgrims, crooked gambling, some desultory rustling—though no charge was ever made to stick. We had no law, and have none still.”
“You and Quint were in conflict from the start,” Sam guessed.
“Quint is blessed with luck,” Morgan said. “Most camps go bust when a gold strike runs out, but before that could happen, Lobo became a way station for drovers trailing cattle to summer range in Canada and back again in the autumn. By and by this business petered out as homesteaders came in and fenced the range, yet once again fortune smiled on Quint when we stock growers got the wolfing law passed. Those who came to take profit from it rely on Quint for gear, provisions, and liquor.”
“You mentioned homesteaders, but you pretty much seem to have this territory to yourself.”
“I bought them out and gave them a fair price,” Morgan said. “It was a boon; otherwise they would have gone belly up and abandoned their property for no remuneration. This is decent country, but not such in which you can make an agricultural living on a mere three hundred twenty acres.” Morgan stood, went to the window. “I prospered, but now I am beset.”
“By Quint?” Holt asked.
“From all sides.” Morgan turned to face them. Charity gave him an odd look, as if she knew what was coming next. “Quint and the Blackfoot,” Morgan said.
Sam looked confused. “Indians,” Holt explained, though he wasn’t following this much better than she.
“I’ve coexisted peacefully with the natives,” Morgan said. “Occasionally they help themselves to one of my beeves, but never more than three animals a year and only when game is scarce. In exchange, they make me presents of clothing and trade goods that by their lights are of equal value. Never mind; I consider the cows they appropriate to be fair recompense for what we have taken from them.” Charity returned to set the coffeepot on the stove, darted a flirtatious glance at Holt.
“But this season,” Morgan continued, “I have lost over a dozen animals.”
“Not to the Blackfoot,” Charity said.
“Hush up,” Morgan said. “I’ve got as good as a confession. I am on speaking terms with the chief. He admitted that some of his braves are beyond his control, but denied either involvement or gain.”
“Did you believe him?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know. Quint definitely wishes to drive me out, and the Indians have a motive as well.”
“Start with Quint.” To Holt’s mind he was the more formidable threat, especially with that band of ruffians at his apparent disposal. “What’s he got against you?”
“I represent the civilization that is bound to come to these parts and is antithetical to Quint’s ambitions. There is talk that the Northern Pacific will lay track through here, which will make small ranching and farming far more feasible, and will bring in a flood of decent people who will look dimly on such as Quint.”
Morgan extended a second finger. “In the meantime, Quint can make a small fortune simply through thievery of my estate and stock. That is reason enough in itself.” Morgan added a finger to make the final tally. “Lastly comes pure meanness. Quint loathes the Blackfoot, and would be pleasured immensely if he incited a panic that led to a war against them.”
Morgan cleared his throat. “You’ll excuse us.”
Prospect scowled at his brother, but he took the whiskey bottle in one hand and the wrist of his reluctant daughter in the other, marched her out.
Morgan waited until the door closed again. “Teddy Brantville is my friend and colleague,” he said. “You will have surmised that he has told me all.”
“All of what?”
“Brantville explained your predicament as well as his belief in your innocence,” Morgan continued when they were gone. “Quint is likely to take a more venal view, if he knows the facts of the reward.”
“That sounds a wee bit like a threat,” Sam observed. “My partner doesn’t take kindly to threats.”
“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “You are my last hope.”
“You been running this place by yourself up to now?”
Morgan shook his head. “I had a couple of cowhands until last week. They disappeared along with their gear, so I expect—hope, anyway—that they were run off rather than killed.”
“That’s cheering,” Holt said.
“Run off by the man you seek,” Morgan continued. “I saw him lurking around one day.” Morgan described him; it was Gutt, all right.
“But the first order of business is to bring my cows in. As you saw when you rode in, I put up irrigated hay and keep the animals on feed through the winter.”
“That we can do,” Holt said.
“In the course of the roundup, you may have opportunity to find out who is rustling, and to stop it.”
“How?”
“With evidence, I can summon the law. I’m not asking you to engage in vigilantism. And when you have completed that, you may find this Gutt.”
“That still leaves Quint waiting to pounce, if your estimation of him is on the money.”
Morgan looked sheepish, and Holt guessed the omission was deliberate. “One problem at a time,” the rancher mumbled.
Holt stood. “We’ll have to talk this over,” he said finally.
“You do that,” Morgan said. “You’ll find your belongings in the bunkhouse.”
Another item in a checklist of what Holt did not like about this business, but Holt saw no profit in making an issue of it. He cocked his head at Sam, and they got out of there. The cabin, like his situation, was beginning to feel increasingly confining.
Chapter Six
The mountain men who were the first non-native settlers on the high plains of Montana claimed there were only two seasons, and as Holt and Sam slept through their first night on Morgan’s ranch, winter dismissed summer with the grim finality of a bouncer ejecting an obstreperous drunk. They arose to four inches of snow in the barnyard, a skim of ice atop the stock tank, slate skies, and an assertive chill in the air.
That the sea change in the weather held off until their arrival was good fortune for Morgan. Many ranchers free-ranged their cattle through the winter, and nine years out of ten the animals managed to survive if not fatten. But one especially vicious season spelled disaster, as had almost happened to Holt’s father a few decades earlier. Snow fell by the bucketful and a biting gale drove it into huge drifts in which the poor dumb cows wallowed. Holt and his father managed to bring many of them into the barnyard, where they were tethered and fed on hay loaned by neighbors, but they still lost fully thirty percent of the herd, and at that did better than other ranchers in the area.
He and Sam had debated at some length before accepting Morgan’s offer. The telling point was the chance at Gutt. Despite his ambivalent feelings—and fears—about again confronting the big man, Holt must see to his responsibility. Now that Sam had revealed that, unlike him, she was in no constructive danger from the law, he had an obligation to see this business through to a firm resolution, to clear them rather than hope that this predicament would go away like dreams at dawn. If he balked, there was little reason for her to remain with him, and he didn’t wish to lose her. This part he did not tell her, although he sensed she suspected his growing attachment.
He did get off his chest some reservations. He disliked Morgan’s implied threat if they refused to cooperate, but more significant was a strong hunch that Morgan had not told them everything. Sam had the same sense that they were pawns in Morgan’s conflict with Quint. The Lobo boss, if unaware of their true identities, would learn soon enough that he had failed to scare them off. What was unclear was whether Morgan wanted their presence to quell Quint’s threats, or to provoke him into some action. The latter seemed logical. If they left while the situation remained unresolved, Morgan was in the same pickle all over again.
Holt’s suspicions made for heavy baggage as they rode out for their first day as stock gatherers.
Again to Morgan’s luck, the weather grew no harsher, and the roundup went well enough. It took a week, in the saddle dawn to dusk searching out Morgan’s three hundred head of summer-fat beeves, automatic, mindless work with a certain serenity to it.
No overt antagonism from Quint nor any Indians interrupted their work. Both Charity and Prospect rode with them, for something to do or to show Morgan they were pulling their load, but on the second day Prospect began nipping from a pint before noon, emptied it within hours, and fell off his horse. Holt laid down the law, and subsequently only Charity joined them.
The girl perplexed Holt. She rode well and could head a recalcitrant cow with grace, but remained an erratic enigma. Sam had opened up to her to the extent of revealing she’d once worked as a writer, and Charity was genuinely interested in Sam’s stories. At the same time, Holt could not miss the occasional lascivious looks with which she favored him, although in time he came to be pretty certain it was only flirting. Once in a while, though, Charity’s behavior bordered on the lunatic. She might take off across the prairie whooping, or shoot at some varmint for no reason at all. It was as if she was going out of her way to remind them she was not quite right.
On the fourth day, as they were searching the northerly reaches of Morgan’s traditional range, Charity disappeared for several hours. When she returned, she was accompanied by an Indian, a tall handsome brave in buckskins. They stopped fifty feet from where Holt was working four cows, and the Blackfoot studied him for a long moment before raising a hand in polite acknowledgment, then making his departure.
When Holt demanded to know what went on, Charity threw one of her silly fits, and he could see he would get nothing from her. He considered mentioning the incident to Morgan, decided to hold it in reserve for the time being. It might profit to have a secret from the rancher.
Holt came to learn that Prospect, while pushing the bounds of whatever accommodation he had with his brother, was careful not to sunder them. Prospect was generally as sullen as his daughter could be manic. In her usual insightful way, Sam opined that this was a form of drunkard’s denial: While actually ashamed at his weakness for liquor, Prospect chose to translate it into resentment at his dependence on Morgan’s hospitality. The specific details of what had come to form the Morgan ménage had not yet been volunteered.
In any case, Prospect kept himself sober enough to serve as cook, whipping up eggs from the henhouse for their pre-sunrise breakfasts, cold food for their dinners on the prairie, and hearty suppers to fortify their saddle-weary bodies at day’s end. They ate with Stanley Morgan in the cabin, with the Pittsburgh stove glowing redly to warm them.
After coffee and cigarettes, Holt and Sam repaired to the bunkhouse, cozy thanks to the fire Holt would build before the evening meal. In a single open room with a ceiling low enough that Holt had to duck his head when moving about, six pallets with thick mattresses lined one wall, with their feet facing the stove. On its other three sides were clothing cupboards and hooks for tack; a sideboard with a water bucket, tin cups, and a washbasin; and a deal table with four chairs and a lantern. A shelf above the sideboard housed playing cards, dominoes, a backgammon set, and several dozen dime novels and back issues of Harper’s, Sam’s magazine. One night she found an article of hers; it was the first Holt had a chance to read all the way through, about a Colorado sharper who fleeced several hundred people with a phony land speculation dodge. She wrote well, he decided, and told her so.
