Saddle & Ride (Musaicum Vintage Western). Ernest Haycox

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СКАЧАТЬ the silence was deep and different. A swift spark lighted Clay Morgan's resentment at Herendeen's intolerant interruption. He sat slowly up; he was near enough the fire to be seen. Charley Hillhouse turned his head suddenly to watch Morgan, a small crease of worry showing between his eyes.

      "We'll warn him out of there tomorrow," said Herendeen.

      But when he stopped talking Clay Morgan knew he wasn't finished. Herendeen's thoughts were on his face, for everybody to see. "Or maybe we've got some great big soul in this crowd whose heart bleeds for people like that. Seems to be a hell of a lot of charity around here lately."

      Morgan swayed forward to lift a burning sage stem from the fire; its oil-bright glow flickered against his cheeks, against his eyes. This silence held its waiting and its reserve. Morgan tossed the sage stem back into the fire, drawing a sharp glance from Charley Hillhouse. Lige White uncomfortably crossed his feet. Gurd Grant crouched by the blaze and revealed nothing on his scrupulously neutral face. Morgan relaxed gently on his shoulder blades and pillowed his head against the saddle. He said nothing but he saw the changing expression of Herendeen's cheeks. Herendeen had braced himself for trouble, he had maneuvered this talk around to make a break; but nothing happened and he stood a moment, uncertain and displeased, and afterwards walked away. He called back. "I'll see you tomorrow, Lige, You too, Gurd." Presently he left camp at a dead run.

      Rolled in the blanket, Morgan smoked the cigarette to its end. When he had finished, the fire was a vague glow of ashes and the night's cold had crept in from the sky.

      Instead of turning west to his own ranch, Herendeen traveled due south toward a low range of hills which separated Running W from Three Pines. An hour's ride brought him within sight of a far-shining light, which was the mark of a bomesteader's cabin against the hills; but when he came upon the homesteader's cabin, drifting into the heavy shadows at the base of these hills, a dog began to bark and suddenly the light died. He reined in before the cabin, feeling his contempt for the evident fear which had caused the homesteader to kill the light. They were all alike, these homesteaders, little men crawling as near the range as they dared, sticking their plows into the unplowed soil and slowly starving while the sun burnt up their crops and ruined the land ever afterward for graze. He could not tolerate this breed, or their sun-blackened wives, or their tow-headed children. They were aliens. They were no better than Indians. He sent his deep, blunt call at the shack. "Hey—come out here."

      They were talking, inside. A boy's voice said, "Pa, don't go." A woman was talking, quickly and with suppressed excitement. The door squealed open and somebody stood in its black square, speechless.

      "What are you doing here?" demanded Herendeen. "This place is on Lige White's range. We drove Jim Spackman away from it last year."

      "You Lige White?" said a man in a dim, drawn voice.

      "What the hell is that to you? My name's Herendeen and I asked you a question."

      "Oh," said the man. "I'm Jack Gale. I bought Jim Spackman's rights to this place."

      "He never had any rights to sell."

      "He built the house, Mr. Herendeen." Then the man added, quietly, "It's free land, ain't it? I understood it was. I also understood Mr. White wouldn't mind."

      Herendeen was nettled by the argument. "You damned nesters are all alike, trying to stand on this free-land business. You stick your plow into it and ruin it, and starve to death, and steal cattle to keep your kids alive, and move away. We're not in the game of providin' meat to nesters."

      "I'll make my way," said Gale, peaceably, "and I don't ask for nobody's beef. I want no trouble."

      "You got a fence around that spring?"

      "Yes," said Gale reluctantly.

      "Sure," grunted Herendeen. "Now you pull that fence down and you get out of this country by the end of the week."

      For a moment Gale didn't answer. His breath sighed into the darkness and his feet scraped the doorsill. Spring water, dropping down the hillside, bubbled across the yard. Then Gale said in a halting, softening tone: "I don't see why—"

      Herendeen said, "I don't want any argument. You hear?" Gale's wife called from the interior of the house. "Jack, come in here. Come in." Herendeen heard her run over the floor. She caught hold of her husband and these two were gently wrestling around the doorway with Gale saying, "Now, Allie, stop it—stop it." But she pulled him inside and slammed the door: A child, very young, began to cry in a thin, startled rhythm. Herendeen pushed his horse over the yard, bound away for his ranch. The foot of the horse struck a loose pail, and this racket excited the beast and set him into a quick pitching. Herendeen slashed his spurs into the horse and fought him around the yard. The horse bucked sidewise, smashed into the wall of the shack, hard enough to stir it on its flimsy foundations. Herendeen swung the horse with the pressure of his big knees. He was angry in his quick, thoroughly destructive manner. He bawled: "By God, you be out of here by the end of the week or I'll burn you out!" and plunged his spurs into the horse again, rushing across the desert. Behind him was absolute silence. The baby had ceased crying suddenly, as though a hand had reached over its mouth to stifle it.

      Leaving War Pass, Hack Breathitt fell into the Cache Mountains south of town and went nighthawking along the dimly starlit trails until he felt the need of sleeping; and so made camp and slept. Next day, controlled by no particular desire or fancy, he cruised the hills, as familiar with each gulch and each meadow and ridge as a man is familiar with the rooms and hallways of his house. These hills rolled upward to piny, cool crests beyond which, westward, lay another land of long distances; arrived at the summit he had his look and turned back, liking his own land too well to stray. In this timber he passed Three Pines cattle at graze; far southward he came upon a nester's house, and beyond that arrived at the clearing of a small two-bit rancher by the name of Vance Ketchell. He had noon meal here, discussed the weather and traveled on; once, from a prow of these benchlands, he stood long enough to watch the scatter of houses, corrals and barns marking Herendeen's ranch, lying beside a shallow stream, lying between the short walls of a canyon. From the elevation he was able to look beyond that canyon to Grant's ranch at the base of the Haycreek Hills, Far up in Mogul, to the rear of other gray-cut hills, lay Clay Morgan's range. Below him, in Herendeen's valley, dust rose on the winding road, kicked up by a team. From this distance it looked like Mike Levi's storewagon; Mike made the rounds with an unfailing regularity, selling almost anything, needles and vanilla extract and cheap stock saddles and veterinary remedies.

      It was all a part of a warm-bright summer's day. Hack Breathitt came down the bench into Herendeen's valley; though at a distance from the ranch, crossed over and lost himself in the broken, pine-covered ridges at the base of Mogul. Magpies flashed black and white ahead of him; at Dell Lake, a miniature pond of water surrounded by tules, he saw a few ducks bobbing. Still higher on the edge of Mogul he looked back to see the Burnt Ranch stage wind upgrade from the southwestern desert, tip over the lip of a low pass near Dell Lake and go on toward War Pass in funneling clouds of dust.

      As he followed the net of trails leading upward to the Mogul, Hack Breathitt had no cares and no serious thoughts. This was a fine, warm day. Ahead of him on the pine-shadowed trail occasional golden shafts of sunlight slanted through the tree tops. Here and there a swirl of dust showed where an antelope had been a moment before. The silence was thick and held its rank scent of resin; and at intervals Hack sang incomplete bits of such songs as he knew, the sound of that going out around him in widening waves. Dusk caught him in this rough land, still without any thought of discretion; at full dark he turned a bend of the trail and saw firelight pulse against the side of a near-by ravine. He turned into the ravine and, being a smart young man, he called ahead of him to disturb nobody's nerves: "Hello—hello—hello!"

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