Novel 1969 - Conagher (v5.0) Page 3

  And it didn’t have to be Injuns. Cholera had done for a lot of them, and starvation and thirst for a good many more, and some had been killed by men like Kiowa Staples, who were hunting a reputation. If you got thrown from your horse out on the prairie alone, or got caught in a stampede, gored by a longhorn, or drowned swimming a river…there were a hundred ways a man could die in this western country, and nobody the wiser. It was likely the way he himself would end.

  Somebody poured coffee into his cup and he muttered a thanks without looking up. His fingers were beginning to get warm. It beat all how this country could be hot in the daytime and could freeze up at night.

  It was time he started hunting himself a place to last out the winter. He didn’t have to feel in his jeans to know there was just two dollars there. Two lone silver dollars, and whatever he’d get out of this job—he’d have to rustle a job on one of these new cow outfits.

  Twenty-two years…it was too long…and nothing ahead of him but a stiffening of muscles, growing tired a little sooner, finding it harder to keep warm. He’d driven spikes on the railroad, handled a cross-cut saw in a tie camp, helped to sink a shaft on a contract job, and helped to build a couple of mountain roads in Colorado. Then he’d driven a team over the Santa Fe, put in four years in the army in the War Between the States and got to be a sergeant. He had been wounded twice, escaped from Andersonville, and had fought Indians in Dakota and Wyoming. He’d gone up the trail from Texas three times, and had punched cows in Texas, the Arizona Territory, Nebraska, and Wyoming. It was a hard life, a bitter, lonely life after a fellow got beyond the kid stage.

  When you were a youngster everything seemed easy, and life was forever. He’d spent a lot of time dreaming about girls, usually about one girl whose face kept changing, but who was always mighty in love with him, and he ready to die for her…only he never met her, somehow.

  He’d never cared for the women on the Line, although he’d had his dealings with them. There’d been a girl he knew in a Missouri town where he drove some cattle…only she married a home guard there, and already had a baby boy when he came back up the trail. That had been just as well, because she wasn’t his cup of tea…he’d tried to talk himself into it. And now he was thirty-five, with nothing but his chaps and his saddle, and womenfolks didn’t cotton to a man with nothing who wasn’t going anywhere.

  These thoughts went through his mind as he ate his beans and some almighty tough meat, and sopped his corn bread in the gravy and settled back to drinking coffee. He was a coffee drinker, and he liked it black and bitter.

  The trouble with him, he was thinking, was that the kind of a woman he fancied was hard to come by, and he wasn’t likely to settle for less. He did not want a big, bustling, brassy woman; he wanted something dainty and feminine he could carry flowers to without her thinking he’d gone off his rocker. The womenfolks he met, at least the single ones, they were hunting a man with a wide stretch of land, with cows to his name and a ranch house with more than two rooms. Well, he could build the ranch house, if it came to that. He’d always been a fair hand with tools.

  “What you goin’ to do when you pay off, Conn?” Kris Mahler was asking. “You goin’ to get drunk?”

  “Ain’t likely. I’m going to rustle me a job, someplace I can put my feet under the table for the rest of the winter.”

  “You goin’ south?”

  “No.” He made the decision as he shaped the words. “I’m going to stay right here. In this here country somewhere.”

  “You got friends here?” Johnny asked.

  “I got no friends anywhere. Only whiskey friends, and that kind don’t stay by you. Seems like I been driftin’ ever since I can remember.”

  “You seen a lot of country, they tell me.”

  “Me? I’ve punched cows from the Musselshell in Montana to the Rio Fuerte in Sonora, and all I got to show for it is saddle sores and savvy, and a thumb lost on the Brazos when I was tryin’ for an extra turn around the horn and a fifteen-hundred-pound steer hit the end of the string. Took my thumb off, and me thirty miles from the ranch and twenty-two from town. I stubbed it against my shirt to hold down the bleeding and heated a brandin’ iron—I cauterized it right there with a runnin’ iron.

  “Then I rode on the twenty-two miles to an Army-post town to let the doc look it over. He looks it over, and then he says, ‘You lost a thumb, boy.’ All of which I could have told him. Then he gave me a stiff drink of rye, had one himself, and cleaned her up a mite, stuck a bandage on it, and charged me four bits for the job.”

  Conn got up. “I’m for sleep. Where can I bed down?”

  “Any place you can find to suit you, as long as it’s on the floor.”

  Conn unrolled his two blankets and ground sheet. Then he straightened up. “Woman over east of here saw Injun tracks a few days back.”

  “I ain’t seen any,” the station agent said. “I figure she’s imaginin’ things.”

  Conn laid out his bed before he replied, and then he straightened up and slipped off his pants. “No, if she says she saw tracks, she saw ’em all right. That’s a pretty steady woman yonder.”

  Long after the light was out Conn lay on his back, his hands clasped behind his head, staring up into the darkness, just thinking. There was water in the Mogollons, and a man might be able to make it up there, with a few head of stock.

  At breakfast Johnny McGivern looked at him curiously. “What you goin’ to do about Kiowa Staples?”

  “Do? What’s there to do? Ever’where you go, Buster, there’s a Kiowa Staples, ever’ town an’ ever’ cow outfit. If a man lets himself be bothered by such as them he ain’t goin’ far. I’ve seen them come and go. If he minds his own affairs, I’ll mind mine. If he starts anything with me I’ll just cloud up and rain all over him.”

  Conagher took his pay at the Plaza and recovered his own horse from the stage-line corral. He threw his beat-up saddle on the dun and rode down the street. He drew up at a saloon, tied his horse, and went in.

  Mahler was there, and he greeted Conagher. “Have one on me. They’ve hired me to wrangle stock for ’em.”

  “Luck!” Conagher said, and took his drink. He tossed it down, giving the few men in the room a cool glance. “I’ll buy one, and then I’m riding.”

  Mahler leaned closer. “Staples is in town.”

  “The hell with him.”

  Conagher rode to the store, only a few steps away, and bought himself a new rope, some coffee, a side of bacon, flour, dried fruit, and some odds and ends. Made up in a sack, it would ride easy behind his saddle.

  Outside he threw it into position behind his saddle and was about to hang the coil of rope over the horn when he heard a step behind him. “All right, Conagher. This time it won’t be fists.”

  It was Staples’ voice, and Conn turned on one heel, swinging the tightly coiled rope in a sweeping blow that caught the gunman across the face. It was a brutal blow; the coiled rope was like iron and it caught Staples across the mouth and nose, knocking him staggering into the hitching rail.

  Coolly, matter-of-factly, and without hurry, Conagher swung the coil again, smashing him across the mouth as Staples clawed for his gun.

  The gunman never had a chance. He had expected a gun battle or an argument—anything but this. Conagher stood wide-legged in front of him and, backing the gunman against the rail, he proceeded to beat him unmercifully with the swinging coil of rope.

  No matter how Staples tried to turn, the rope was there to meet him. His nose was broken, his lips smashed to pulp, his cheeks and ears bloody, and when he finally got his gun out a sweeping blow with the coiled rope struck it from his hand into the dust.

  At no time did Conagher seem hurried. He whipped Staples coldly, almost casually, as though it were of no importance. The crowd that gathered watched silently and in awe.

  When Kiowa went to his knees, Conagher struck him one more swinging blow that knocked him into the dust, and then he said, “You better ride out of here, Staple
s. An’ leave that gun alone. You ain’t fit to handle one. And don’t you cross my trail again. I don’t like bein’ braced by no tinhorn.”

  Picking up the gun, he shucked the cartridges from it and dropped them into his pocket, and dropped the gun into the water trough. Then he mounted up and rode out of town.

  Kiowa Staples sat very still, sure of only one thing—that if he moved Conagher would come back. He sat there breathing in deep, shuddering gasps, the blood falling in slow drops from his nose and mouth.

  Slowly the crowd filtered away, and when finally the beaten gunman staggered to his feet he fell back against the hitching rail and stood clutching it, his head hanging.

  A trouble maker leaned over. “Kiowa, you want to borrow my gun?”

  Staples turned his head and stared at the man blankly, then he straightened up and staggered away. He wanted only a horse. He wanted only to ride away, out of here.

  Chapter 4

  *

  WHEN JACOB TEALE had been gone for two months, Evie had her first doubts. Travel was hard, and he might have had to go further to find cattle he could buy, but he would surely have sent word. He would have written.

  Jacob had never been a heedless man. He was not thoughtful about her needs, but he was a practical man who did whatever needed to be done. Somehow, had he been able, he would surely have sent word.

  The supplies brought by the stage company had lasted well, and Evie had ordered again. She had even managed to save two dollars which she carefully put away.

  It was Laban who worried her. He was working too hard, caring for the horses, getting them out to meet the stages, picketing them on grass to make the little hay they had last, and cutting wood for the house. She had tried to help, but he resented it, wanting to carry on by himself.

  She saw no more of Kiowa Staples. Charlie McCloud had given her a brief account of what had happened. “Never saw anything like it,” he said. “Staples came a-hunting trouble and Conagher gave it to him. It was as bad a whipping as a man ever got. Have you ever seen what a club forty-five feet of rope will make when it’s in a tight coil? I can tell you one thing. Staples may take a shot at Conagher from ambush sometime, but he sure won’t face him again.

  “Kiowa never expected anything like that. He expected Conn to try to draw against him, but that swinging coil of rope just knocked him groggy. He’d been hit four or five times before he even had a chance to do anything, and Conagher never let him get set. I figure that’s one would-be gunman who is cured.”

  It was hard to believe it of the quiet, rather gentle man she recalled. When she said as much, McCloud shrugged. “Mrs. Teale, I figure this Conagher’s got a lot behind him. He ain’t come to this of a sudden. He’s a man who’s had years of it to put the steel in him. He’s seen a-plenty and he just ain’t about to be bothered by any tinhorn who comes along the pike.”

  And then he repeated what someone else had said. “He’s the kind you just don’t push, Mrs. Teale. Reminds me of Billy Brooks over to Dodge. Billy was a gun-using marshal and a good one. In his first two or three months on the job he shot thirteen men…I don’t mean he killed them all, but he was engaged in gunplay with them. Then he crossed horns with a tough old buffalo hunter named Kirk Jordan, and Kirk made Billy take water. He run Billy clean out of town.

  “Any gunman who wants to build himself a reputation had best steer clear of men like Kirk Jordan or Conn Conagher, and a few others I could name. They just don’t put up with foolishness.”

  *

  THE ARRIVAL OF the stage was the big moment of the day, and when it was gone there was a time of clearing up and taking stock. The stage brought news, and there was talk of politics, gunfighters, Indians, or range conditions.

  When evening came Evie stood at the door and looked far across the grass, scenting the wind from the distant ranges with its smell of hot grass and the fainter smell of cedar from the ridges beyond.

  She never tired of looking out across the plain, nor of watching the tumbleweeds roll past when the wind blew strong, rolling along like brown, fat cart wheels across the open country. Sometimes she could count fifty or sixty at once, rolling away, stopping when the wind died, then rolling on again as the breeze rose.

  Where did they go? Was there a fence out there somewhere where they could hang up and rest? Was there a wall of brush? A forest? A mountain range? Or did they just roll on and on forever, clear around the world, maybe?

  She could watch the wide plain from the window near which she cooked and washed the dishes; she could see the ever-changing light upon it, the cloud shadows, and sometimes the suggestion of movement out there beyond the range of her sight.

  How far was it across that plain? She did not know, and she never asked, for she did not want it reduced to miles. To her it went on forever…it was like a vast sea.

  “I wish we had more to read,” Laban said one night. “I need schoolin’.”

  “Yes, we all need more to read.” She rested her hands from sewing. “I will speak to Mr. McCloud. He may be able to find some newspapers or magazines.”

  She took up the sewing again, although her fingers were tired, and her eyes ached. “Until then, Laban, you can read the land.”

  “The land?”

  “Look upon the land, Laban—there are stories everywhere. Study the sky and the trees, the tracks of animals and the way the birds fly. You can learn things no book will ever teach you.”

  “I saw the track of a snake yesterday,” Ruthie said. “It was near the spring.”

  “You be careful,” Laban warned. “There’s rattlers around.”

  When they stopped talking they could hear the coyotes. And then suddenly there was a rushing and plunging from the corral.

  “Indians!” Laban was up, running for the shotgun.

  Evie had put down her sewing and got to her feet. She went to the door and took up the still lighted lantern standing there. Abruptly, she swung the door wide and lifted the lantern.

  The ranch yard was crowded with horses, and among them, striking at the bars of the corral gate, was a magnificent wild stallion.

  He swung toward the light as it fell across the horses, and he blew shrilly, in challenge as well as in astonishment. He was not beautiful, but stocky and strong, with an ugly head and teeth that flashed as he rolled his eyes toward the light. His mane was tangled and wild, and he swung from the corral and faced the light, bobbing his head and pawing the hard earth with fierce, challenging strokes. Then he swung suddenly and, nipping at the nearest horse, drove his herd from the yard.

  For a long time she stood there, listening to the receding pound of their hoofs, and then she went to the corral.

  The horses in the corral were wild and frightened, drawn by the wildness of the mustang stallion, but shuddering with fear, too. She talked to them calmly, replacing the one bar that had been knocked from the gate. She had known there were wild horses out there on the plains, but these were the first she had seen. For a long time she remembered that stallion, and the wild look in his eyes as he stared at her.

  The cabin door, when she closed and barred it, was a comforting thing.

  *

  THE DAYS GREW colder. Evie spent much of her time out with the children, gathering fuel from the hillsides. Ancient cedars had fallen, leaving their gray, gnarled, and twisted limbs on the broken rocks of the steep slope. They dragged them down to the cabin, picking up twigs, branches…all that could be found.

  Sometimes Laban or Ruthie would saddle Nathan, their appaloosa gelding, and ride out to rope and drag home tree trunks or heavy limbs from farther away, building a slowly growing pile of fuel against the coming cold.

  It was on a frosty morning that Charlie McCloud turned the stage into the yard and swung down to open the door for the passengers. There were four that morning, two ladies from the East—and they were ladies—well gotten up for the time and the place, and two men who looked tough and capable. Both wore business suits, wide hats and boots, and the taller o
f the two wore a United States marshal’s badge.

  Charlie reached into the boot and took out an armful of newspapers and magazines, and a couple of books. “Some of them are beat-up, Mrs. Teale,” he said, “but there’s some readin’ for you.”

  Inside the house, Evie quickly put food on the table, and then asked the women, “Would you prefer tea? I have some.”

  “Would you, please?” said the older one. “I mean, if it isn’t asking too much. The coffee…it’s so strong.”

  “They like it strong out here. They say if you can’t float a horseshoe on it the coffee is too weak.”

  When she had tea on the table she went to the cupboard and got out a plate of cookies.

  McCloud stared at them. “Mrs. Teale, you been holdin’ out on us. Those are the first cookies I’ve seen you make.”

  “I didn’t know you liked them. I often make doughnuts, too.”

  “Better not let it get around,” Charlie said, “or you’ll have half the cowboys in the Territory hangin’ around…ridin’ for miles to get here.”

  “You will have to forgive us,” Evie said to the ladies.

  “The place is rather primitive. Next year we hope to add to the cabin so we will have more room.”

  “I love your view,” the younger woman said. She was no more than nineteen, with large blue eyes and long lashes. “Mrs. Teale, I am Lucy Baker, and this is my aunt, Celestine Scott. We are from Philadelphia, and were going to Prescott. We’re looking for my brother.”

  “He lives in Prescott?”

  “No, that was the last address we had for him. That…that was two years ago.”

  “Two years? The way people travel in this country he might be anywhere. What is his name?”

  “Scott Baker…you’d know him easily. He’s tall, and has dark, tight curls. There’s a small scar on his cheek bone, and he has a beautiful smile. He’s always making fun…they used to say he was wild, but that was just his way.”