Lassiter Tough Page 10

  “Oh, no, you go ahead. I got somethin’ caught in my throat for a minute is all.” He coughed several times. “There, I got it down. Piece of gristle, I reckon.” The smile he gave her was ghastly.

  Millie frowned down at her plate and finally pushed it aside. My God, he didn’t think that Lassiter … Today she had impulsively reached for Lassiter’s hand because he was bringing so much pleasure to a young boy. Had Rep seen it?

  She decided to bring the matter into the open. “Rep, don’t be jealous of Lassiter.”

  “Now that’s downright silly of you to say.” His laughter was strained. She spoke again of going to town.

  “And I thought it would be a chance for me to get away from the account books. You asked me to go over them, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Far as I can tell, most of the money from the cattle sale is already owed. Some bills are two or three years old, Rep.”

  “Yeah.”

  At first he had been on the verge of forbidding her to go to town with Lassiter. Then a small voice had said, Keep an eye on them. See what they’re up to… .

  But the next day Millie didn’t go to town with Lassiter. She said she had a headache. So Chandler was surprised when he saw the wagon from a screen of brush, at the halfway point. Millie wasn’t sharing the high seat with his foreman.

  He rode back home, wondering.

  When he got home, Millie was dragging around the kitchen with a long face. He asked her about the day and beamed when she told him she had decided not to go to town after all.

  But the joy went out of him when she added, “I had a feeling you really didn’t want me to go.”

  He spluttered and stammered for a moment, then managed to speak a straight string of words. “Now that’s the craziest thing I ever heard of.”

  “Well, you certainly didn’t act like it last night at supper.”

  “I didn’t feel too good.”

  She looked at him critically. “Rep, you do look sort of peaked.” And there was something in his eyes she didn’t like and the corners of his mouth dropped. There seemed to be a grayness in his face.

  She told him that he needed a bath and then she’d put him to bed. “You look like you might be coming down with the fevers… .”

  “Naw, I ain’t. All I got …” He hadn’t planned to tell her, but since the wedding he’d felt an occasional sharp pain when he breathed. “Well, all I got is a mite of pain in my chest. Musta been from that piece of gristle I had a time swallowin’ last night,” he said, passing it off lightly.

  By the end of the week she brought up another troubling subject. “Every night, Rep? You should rest up a day or so in between.” She started to say, “A man your age …” Then she decided not to because it would puncture his vanity. All she said was, “I don’t think it’s good for you. Not every single night.”

  Somehow in all this intimate discussion the name of Lassiter crossed her mind. Her heart sang for a few moments, then she turned the feeling off like it was a spigot. “It’s for your own good, Rep,” she finished.

  In going over the books, Millie found their affairs to be in deplorable shape—even worse than she imagined at first. Her husband hated keeping records and Herrera didn’t understand it. And Vince Tevis, while he was foreman, had left it up to the boss.

  Finally, after much hemming and hawing, Chandler admitted that his late wife had handled the books and kept everything running smoothly.

  Most of the money from the cattle sale had gone in delinquent mortgage payments to a bank in San Antonio. It was agreed that Lassiter should take north another thousand head of cattle for a quick sale. They needed money.

  “Could we go along, Rep?” Millie suggested. “It would be exciting.”

  Chandler scowled at his wife. Did she think something might happen to him on a cattle drive and she’d have Lassiter all to herself? Then he put the idea out of his mind, hating himself for even thinking it.

  He told her they’d stay home. It was Lassiter’s job to drive the herd. “When he gets back an’ we’re more or less squared around, we’ll do some of that travelin’ we talked about.”

  He kissed her. She was a sweet girl and he loved her dearly.

  There was another reason for not going north. He just didn’t feel up to it. What he needed was a change without work, to see new country, new faces. Most of all, he needed a long rest.

  13

  *

  With summer coming on, the heat in the jungle of brush was more intense than it had been at the original roundup. This time they worked alone, with no other outfits to give them a hand.

  It helped to minimize the hardship because the cattle had not drifted too far since roundup. Many times during the hectic days Lassiter asked himself how and why he had gotten into this. But it kept going back to that twilight in Ardon, New Mexico, the time of tragedy coming so unexpectedly in a reunion with Vince Tevis. He still hadn’t settled the score with Sanlee, who had been keeping away from Box C. What he didn’t know about were the outpourings into Rep Chandler’s unwilling ear to build up the image of cuckold.

  Lassiter intended to take seven men with him on the drive, leaving the rest—including Herrera—at Box C, in case Sanlee decided to move in during his absence.

  Fortunately for Box C, the East, after a few dry years, was hungry for Texas beef. Cattle prices were up and the railhead at Tiempo was booming.

  Millie drove a buckboard out to the holding ground with her husband as passenger to watch the start of the northbound push. It was a warm day with only a few clouds speckling the blue dome of the sky.

  When Lassiter had the herd on the move at last, the ornery cattle finally in line with the more docile animals and making their slow, mile-eating pace, he rode over to the buckboard. It was parked in the sparse shade of a towering mesquite. Lassiter whipped off his hat and scrubbed a sleeved forearm across his forehead.

  “We’re rolling.” He gestured at the cloud of dust thrown skyward by animals on the move.

  Chandler looked drawn, Lassiter noticed, and kept biting his lower lip.

  “I drove today because Rep wasn’t feeling too well,” Millie explained. She patted her husband on the knee.

  “I was gonna get one of the men to drive,” Chandler said, his voice strangely tight, “but Millie insisted on comin’ along to see you off.”

  Millie threw back her head and laughed; it was forced. “Of course I wanted to see Box C beef on the move. It’s important to us.”

  “You got a big job ahead of you, Lassiter,” Chandler put in with a weak smile, “but I know you can do it.”

  “It won’t be easy, but what is?” Lassiter didn’t like the tension he felt between the couple.

  That day Millie wore a fawn-colored hat with a wide brim to shield her face from the sun. Her hair hung down her back in a single thick braid. Lassiter found himself wanting to reach out and touch it. He restrained the urge. She was watching him out of dark eyes as if reading his mind. The sleeves of a plain calico dress were pushed up on her rounded forearms.

  “Just be careful, Lassiter,” she said solemnly. “And keep an eye open for my dear brother.” Her lips twisted.

  “Not one eye but two,” Lassiter said with a hard grin.

  “I oughta be goin’ along with you,” Chandler said and stared morosely at the dust ballooning above the slow-moving herd. The buckboard team, a bay and a chestnut, flicked flies with their tails and occasionally stomped the ground restlessly. A row of vultures on a mesquite limb some distance away regarded them solemnly.

  Lassiter wondered if they were an omen. He felt a chill.

  Chandler produced a paper from his pocket and handed it to Lassiter. “Like before, here’s my power of attorney,” the rancher said, “so you can sell my cows an’ collect for ’em.”

  And again Lassiter was heartened that Chandler trusted him so completely, at least so far as money was concerned because he was noting a return of tension between the newlyweds. And fo
r some strange reason, a prickling at the back of his scalp told him that he was the cause of it.

  “Anything else, Rep?” he asked in a level voice.

  “Just get back soon as you can,” Chandler said gravely. “We’ll miss you … the both of us.”

  He put out his hand, which Lassiter shook.

  Millie extended a slim right hand. “Good luck, Lassiter,” she said solemnly, her eyes still fixed on his face. Her hand was so soft, the pressure of her fingers gentle in contrast to her husband’s crushing grip. Lassiter found himself wondering if she really liked him. Or was it just that he was her husband’s foreman and for now a source of money to keep the ranch operating? The latter was a much safer assumption than the first, he told himself.

  But he couldn’t help but be aware of the roundness of her figure barely outlined in the flowing dress. How loose ends of her dark hair curled around small ears, and the sparkle of her eyes behind thick lashes.

  Then angrily, he cleared his mind. It was just that he was bone-weary from the rushed gathering of a herd that had allowed his thoughts to drift into such dangerous channels.

  He lifted a hand to the man and woman, then wheeled his black horse and galloped off to catch up with the herd.

  When Millie slapped the reins along the backs of the team and they were rolling toward the home place, Chandler said, “You hadn’t oughta shake hands with him.”

  She turned in surprise. “Why not, for God’s sake, Rep? I wanted to wish him luck. And the Lord knows he’ll need it.” She grew silent as the buckboard rattled and swayed along the wheel tracks through towering brush. “I worry what Brad may do next.”

  “Maybe Brad’s on our side now.”

  “Why would you say a thing like that?” Then her black eyes grew hot. “Has he been talking to you?”

  “Well …” Chandler’s face, which seemed to be graying lately, started to redden.

  “He has! Damn it, Rep, you should know better than to listen to Brad.”

  “I don’t like you cussin’ like a man.”

  “It’s a small worry in face of what confronts us. If it hadn’t been for Lassiter helping us go over the books, we’d be on our way to the poor house.”

  “Lassiter again.”

  “Sometimes lately you act like you despise him. What’s gotten into you, Rep?”

  “I see how you look at him sometimes.”

  “Oh, Christ …”

  “There you go again, cussin’.”

  “Rep, listen to me.” She was hunched over, the reins gripped in her slender hands. “I am your wife. I intend to remain your wife, your faithful wife, until the day one of us dies.”

  “You’re hopin’ it’ll be me.”

  “How can you say that, Rep! How can you?”

  For two miles they rode in silence, then Chandler put a hand on her leg. “I don’t know what’s got into me lately. Been feelin’ kinda poorly an’ I reckon it’s made me think things that ain’t there.”

  “Believe me, Rep, they’re not there at all. Now I want you to go and see the doctor.”

  “Clayburn ain’t fit to doctor horses, let alone humans.”

  “But he’s all we have. When Lassiter gets back, let’s go up to San Antone, if you don’t have any faith in Doc Clayburn.”

  “I feel a heap better now. Gettin’ it outta my system is what done it.”

  “Jealousy. Rep, I’d never have believed it of you.”

  “Gimme the reins. I’ll drive.” He was grinning. “Can’t wait to get you home.”

  She turned over the reins and gave him a troubled smile.

  Brad Sanlee called the six men around him. “The herd’s headin’ north. Pinto just brought word.” He inclined his head at Pinto George who leaned his tall frame against the Diamond Eight barn. His hair and brows were almost albino white, his eyes so pale that sometimes it was hard to tell the iris from the whites.

  Joe Tige said, “Well, let’s get on the move then.” He turned for his horse, but Sanlee called him back.

  “Hear me out, Joe,” the bearded Sanlee said roughly. “I don’t want nothin’ to go wrong this time.” Enough had gone wrong in the past already. Deverax and Bolin failed to kill Lassiter in New Mexico. Then Krinkle and his cousin, the one with the nervous trigger finger, bungled things in Santos. And most humiliating of all, Shorty Doane at the wedding celebration failed to tromp Lassiter into the Texas earth. His hard gray eyes slid to Doane, who stood with heavy arms folded. At long last, his face was healing. But new scars had been added to the old. “Catch Lassiter an’ his bunch in an ambush. I want that herd.”

  “Once we got it, then what?” Doane asked.

  “Take it to Tiempo. Charlie Buckmaster will meet you an’ take it off your hands.”

  “Won’t we have to change the brands?” Tige wanted to know.

  Sanlee smiled. “Buckmaster will take the herd off your hands. Do I have to tell you more?”

  “Seems this Buckmaster must be a slicker packinghouse rep,” the burly Tige said with a laugh.

  “The main thing is it’ll break Chandler. My friend Hobart at the bank says he’s the same as walkin’ a thin rope over a deep canyon.”

  The six men smiled at that. Besides Doane and Tige and George, the other three were Chuck Hale, Dave Rance and Jeddy Quine. All of them were hired on Diamond Eight not only for their ability with cattle but mostly for a proficiency with weapons. It was hard for Sanlee to realize that Lassiter had already cost him Bolin and Krinkle. And Deverax was still hobbling about and likely would never be a whole man again.

  Sanlee gave more details of how he wanted the matter of Lassiter and the herd handled. It prompted a question from Jeddy Quine. He was all bone and scant flesh, tall as the others, with the exception of Doane. The lid of his left eye had a habit of closing partway when he was under stress.

  “With Lassiter out of it, how come you don’t just move onto Box C without bustin’ Chandler?”

  “Because I want to bring my dear sister to her knees,” Sanlee snarled. “Now go on, get the hell out of here.” He stomped away, then wheeled and leveled his thick forefinger. “An’ when you come back, bring me good news. You hear?”

  The six men nodded.

  Sanlee went to the house, where he started to pour whiskey into a glass, then changed his mind and gulped from the bottle. Elva Dowd, using a feather duster, looked disapproving. He ignored her. His hand shook as he lifted the bottle a second time. The stupid questions that brought Millie into it had set him off. Millie, goddamn her to hell! Then tears formed in the corners of his eyes—tears of rage and frustration. When the old man had brought her home to live with them, Brad had fallen wildly in love. And because she was no longer a kid, the old man had noticed it. One day the old man yanked Brad out to the barn. He wet a catch rope in a rain barrel, doubled it and used the rope viciously on his son.

  “She’s your sister! Don’t you to your dyin’ day ever forget that! If you touch her, you’ll burn in hell for a thousand years! You hear me, Brad? And worse, I’ll beat every square inch of hide off your miserable body.”

  Brad, bleeding, could barely stand. The old man threw the reddened rope on the barn floor and snarled, “Today was only a sample!”

  Brad Sanlee had heard every word and aside from killing his own father outright, knew the threat would always be hanging over his head. To this day, he still bore the scars across his back and buttocks. But even though at times since the beating he was tormented almost beyond endurance, the old man’s warning had been embedded in his brain as if chiseled in granite. One thing had been settled: If he couldn’t have Millie himself, then by God, he’d at least dictate whom she married.

  A second drink calmed him. With Chandler broke, Millie would have to run to her big brother and beg. Sanlee would finally pat her on the cheek and give them enough to live on. From the way Rep was looking these days, Sanlee didn’t think he’d last long, broke or not. Who was next? he wondered. Why not Kilhaven? He owned the largest of the
three spreads east of Box C. Mrs. Marcus Kilhaven. Millie should be pleased. It had a nice sound to it.

  From the window he saw his men riding out. “Good-bye, Lassiter,” he said aloud and lifted his bottle high in a toast of death to the enemy.

  14

  *

  For three days Lassiter sensed that someone was stalking them. Time and again he would leave point and ride to the drag, the tail end of the herd where dust boiled and stung the eyes. There he would scout their back trail. It was flat country, crisscrossed by deep gulleys, and always a distant wall of brush on all sides. On cattle drives north, first to Kansas, then the shorter ones to advancing railheads, a wide swath had been trampled through the brush by thousands of big Chihuahua steers that had passed this way.

  On the late afternoon of the fourth day, he rode back a mile to settle his suspicious mind once and for all that they were being trailed. This time he was rewarded. He saw no men, but spotted the tracks of six horses.

  His heartbeat quickened as he drew his rifle and looked around. Where the horses had halted were cigarette butts scattered about and one half-smoked cigar. It was still faintly warm against the back of his hand.

  Quickly he ran in circles to pick up the sign again. He found it to the west, beyond a stretch of caprock where hoofprints didn’t show. Tracks led down into a deep canyon that paralleled the route being taken by the herd.

  Running back to his horse, he vaulted into the saddle and started at a gallop to catch up to the herd. His horse had taken only a few lunging strides at this tag end of a dying day, when the faint crackle of distant rifle fire stiffened his spine.

  He rode hard, wind searing his eyes, making them tear. As he came within sight of the herd, spread out across flat country, he saw no sign of strange horsemen. There was no tangle of brush to obstruct his view, just barren ground. It had been his intention to push on until reaching the grass he remembered from the previous trail drive.

  It was like a tableau he beheld, every one of the thousand head of cattle standing tensed as if statues carved from reddish wood, topped with a forest of great horns. When there was no further firing, he began to wonder.