Part 4

‘Over a hundred miles from Bismo, and just before dark, coming to water and an abandoned town called Red Ante. Bart ridin’ light and easy; the rest of us done for, my horse dyin’ under me, ears loppin’, the weight of his head hangin’ on my arm. I’d ridden him to death--that made me all the uglier.... Gettin’ dark, as I say, and we halted at the edge of that dusty hell-hole, everything saggin’ and sand-blown.... Palto--our work wasn’t over--’

* * * * *

‘But what did they do to him?’ Elbert burst out a moment later; yet he was afraid to hear. The cabin interior had taken on a startling unreality. He seemed to be back in Red Ante ... the lone sandy road that nightfall twelve years ago. Then the quiet words:

‘Recollect what I told you was in the blacksmith shop?’

Elbert moved to the door, his eyelids narrowed by the sunlight. He was ill, intolerably shaken, but the weary voice followed him.

‘I know it ain’t pleasant to hear, young man. It ain’t been pleasant to live through--that night, nor for a dozen years. It don’t get no better, but you’ve got to know. And there’s only a little more--’

Elbert braced for the rest. What called his will-power to bear it was that he was only listening to a story a dozen years later, and this man had lived through the action of it--had heard the sounds--had lost his boy--just a note pinned to the saddle, all that was left.

The old man turned his face away.

‘I guess that’s about talk enough from me right now,’ he said after a moment, ‘only that when we got back to Bismo, they entered a murder charge against Bart. ‘Mebbe it was murder Letchie,’ Mort Cotton said at the hearin’, ‘but the most merciful bullet I ever heard fired, was that one of Bart’s just ’fore he rid out of Red Ante.’ But no words of Mort’s or mine did any good.... You can go down trail now. Mort’ll tell you the rest, if I don’t get to it--’

VI

THE LISTENING MARE

TWO weeks later Elbert was closing up the cabin. He had been through all the papers. There was one having to do with the lineage of Ganopol, a running horse, with lines tracing back to Europe and the Near East, and the days when man and horse were mates of the world. Names--feminine names of the desert like those of the Old Testament, for the horse-lines of Araby were kept from mother to daughter and not from father to son--‘The Listening Mares.’ There were sweet meadow names of England ... there was a remark in pencil on one corner of the big sheet:

‘Her pedigree isn’t any longer than a piece of burnt string, and where she got herself from, I’m not prepared to state, but for a horse to sit on and come across with good sense, little Mamie’s mother, old Clara, was sure a triumph of breeding--’

It was almost like a voice. Elbert turned his eyes to the empty cot. It was as if he could see Mr. Leadley looking over the certificate of registration and writing down that remark--not having any one to speak aloud to. A lot of talk about Mamie’s father--too much silence about old Clara, he had probably thought. A little later as Elbert touched a match to some papers in the fireplace, these brief but laborious lines caught his eye:

‘... On looking him over at your request, Bob, I don’t feel troubled about his honesty, but I’m not so sure he’s real bright.’

It was the letter he had brought up trail from Mort Cotton that first day at San Forenso. Another proof that Mr. Leadley had been thinking of sending him down into Sonora for Bart, before the accident in the shaft. He had asked his old partner’s judgment. This reminded Elbert of Mr. Cotton’s first fierce appraisal of him in San Forenso. A low nicker reached him from the corral and a flushed smile came to his face, as he moved out.

Somehow in lifting the wooden pin of the cedar gate, the sense came over him again of the quality of the man whom he had known so well--just a pin of manzanito to hold the gate, but there was an art about the way the knots were cut. The mare came up to him nodding and stepping high with her front feet. She seemed to say that this conspiracy to keep her in the dark had gone far enough; that the time had come for her to know what was going on.

‘... And you’re to be mine, Mamie--from now on!’ Elbert muttered. He had been trying to get used to it for days. ‘What do you think about that? Not very much, I guess.... Not much more than Mort Cotton did, probably.’

The mare wasn’t telling. She was friendly, however, nudging under the arm, nosing at his hands and pockets.

‘Oh, I know what you want--a piece of cake.’

He went back to the cabin. The strangest feeling came over him in the shadows. This was his place to come and go in, but the fact was slow to settle in him. He missed his old friend and didn’t feel quite up to the reality of possession. One man’s whole life--these things represented--and a mare that couldn’t be bought.... There might have been some hope, the doctor had repeatedly suggested, if Mr. Leadley could have been moved down to San Forenso, but the old man had refused to hear to that. He had to come to his own conclusion, apparently. Days of just sitting around--Mort Cotton there, the doctor riding up to the claim every day--about as hard days as the young man had lived through so far.

* * * * *

The last chest was locked, the last cabinet.

Elbert glanced around before shutting and padlocking the outer door of the cabin--a wonder passing through him about sometime coming back--with Bart.... In a sense, this meant his start for Sonora right now. Of course, there were matters to close up in San Forenso--affairs of the Dry Cache, of banks, papers and probate, but Mamie was now to be ridden down trail and it was like the beginning of a new life. From the doorway, he studied the mare’s sculptured head. There she stood, as if listening to sounds which she alone could detect.

Practically his first experience in saddling anything but the wooden horse. The horses he had failed to tarry on at Heaslep’s had been saddled by others--even old Chester on that unforgettable day. He knew the straps and cinches--part of his recent business, and Mamie wasn’t too restive, so far. Funny, Elbert thought, that he should have sold that Pitcairn stock-saddle to himself, after all.

‘Thirty-eight pounds,’ he muttered.

Trouble came to Mamie’s eyes as he undertook to tuck the steel between her teeth. She didn’t like the way he went about it; also it seemed, he had to mash her ears about to get the bridle on. She was nervous as a child being severely washed. Finally the man got his foot in the stirrup and raised himself. With a little dance to the right, the mare glided from under, and stood with trailing bridle-rein, looking at him, confused and incredulous.

‘I guess I couldn’t have stepped up on her in the way she’s used to,’ he remarked.

He tried again. Mamie seemed to have a certain responsibility for him this time, like a mother-hen trying to get on with an unfamiliar chick. But she had her own mysterious forces and impulses to cope with, too. She had been penned-in for altogether too many days and darted out of the corral gate with a suddenness that jerked the man’s body and arm back to keep his place. Mamie’s head flung upward in utter dismay, and the awfulness of having put weight like that on her tender mouth, uncentered Elbert entirely for the time. It was like clashing gears in a fine machine that has been desperately hard to obtain--only ten times--infinitely worse--this, a living thing, cherished from a baby by an old man who had been a horseman all his days.

The saddle kept slipping forward. Elbert hadn’t known at first how to tighten the girths. He didn’t dare to look underneath. At least, there was no blood mixed with the foam around the steel of her bit.... Twenty-two miles down trail, and long before the end, his own agony took the edge of strain from the fierce imaginings of damage he was doing the mare. Mamie didn’t stop to walk; she danced down trail--to friends of hers at Mort Cotton’s ranch. It was as if she expected, when she got there, to hear the voice that had been silent so long. A hundred times Elbert thought of this. His bones crunched; he felt the scald of blood and sweat on his thighs. But once or twice, even in the pain, a flash of splendor went through him--at her arched lathered neck, the lift of power from beneath, some new magic from the earth--

No need to ask the way to Mort Cotton’s place. Mamie veered to the left, at the end of San Forenso’s main street, following the wagon tracks at a show-trot to the wide gateway, where she was welcomed from all quarters at once. Mort Cotton called his greeting from the doorway of the ranch house, as Elbert let himself down, steadying himself before letting go of the pommel. Mort approached. What was left of the younger man withered as those eyes, under the white bushy brows, fixed upon the mare. This was far more severe than being appraised himself.

‘Lucky old Bob couldn’t see her, with the saddle as far back as that,’ Mr. Cotton remarked.

Elbert had ceased to breathe. Raw and angry patches wavered in imagination before his eyes, as the saddle was being removed. Hide and hair unruffled--a flood of thankfulness went through him. He moved around to Mamie’s far side and all looked intact there, too. Mort’s twisted hand was now knuckling down the buttons of the mare’s spine.

‘Thought so, all the weight on her kidneys. Say--’ The old man’s glance had turned to Elbert really for the first time, the sharp eyes settling upon his riding cords. ‘Caked, or I’m a Spaniard! I see you’ve been punished, too. Come on into the house. The boys will take care of Mamie. They know her.’

Elbert obeyed, but made no move to a chair as they entered the cool front room.

‘I led her down part of the way,’ he confessed unsteadily. ‘But she wanted to get here. She’s so much--all the time--’

‘She sure is--so much hoss all the time. I know her. And what you want now, young man, isn’t to hurry away nowhere too sudden, but quarters to cool down in right here, good upstandin’ quarters. And say, I’ve got some hosses for you to do your rough ridin’ on. Mamie’s a bit too fine to break a man in. I’m goin’ to give you some lessons personal, before you leave, and bring you up, so’s you’ll know what you’re ridin’, when you get Mamie under the saddle--’

‘Not at once,’ said Elbert.

‘No, you’ll be walkin’ like a bear for a week yet.’

VII

THE SOFT SIDE OF A SADDLE

ELBERT limped out to Mort Cotton’s stables next morning. Mamie saw him coming, her head hanging out above the half-door. She began nodding in a way that made him know she was pawing the ground, though he couldn’t see her feet. It wasn’t hay she wanted. Was it word of the one who did not come, or more of the Road, she was asking for? Elbert wouldn’t have confided to any one the humility he felt, as he moved close. All through a painful night, he had dreamed of the mare running from him, fighting his approach and presence. She would stand up on her hind legs and strike at him when he came near. Ugly lot of sleep torments, in which Mamie was always getting hurt--his fault--but nothing to them after all. Here she was fresh and blithe as usual, nudging, nosing, ready as a child to begin all over again. A fine lift went through him, that she didn’t hold a grudge.

He had to rub his eyes after a moment ... Mexico, riding South, plazas at night, camps in the open, days in the saddle, the freedom he had dreamed of.

... In the next ten days all business was finished in San Forenso and Elbert was healed enough to begin his course in horsemanship under Mort Cotton--the actual riding part. So far as words went, the drill had begun at once.

‘What you need is hardenin’, young feller, and that comes gradual. You’ve been sittin’ on cushions all your life and a stock-saddle ain’t like that. The soft side of a stock-saddle is placed next to a horse. You got to learn to fit to it, because it’s made not to give. After that, you’ve got to learn to ride easy. It ain’t like sittin’ on a box in a grocery store. You can always tell a man with no sense to a horse, sitting up and takin’ it for granted, that a horse is meant to carry him. A man’s weight’s got to be alive--part of his horse--not a dead weight like a pack-mule carries. Bob Leadley used to say a good deal at the last that there’s plenty of good “riders” but only one in a hundred real horsemen.’

‘I’ve heard him say that,’ said Elbert. Times like this, he wished Mort Cotton wouldn’t stop. The old cattleman was altogether unlike Mr. Leadley, but the two had been so much together, that a feeling of closeness to Bart’s father came to him as he talked and rode with Mort. There was much still he needed to know about the old days.

‘... I wasted a lot of time hatin’ Letchie Welton,’ Mort Cotton once said. ‘But there’s no good in that. Old Bob found that out, too. You wouldn’t fancy him a fightin’ man, but I saw him flare up. Letchie Welton can thank me that he lived for Lon Bimlock to kill him. It was at the hearin’ back in Bismo, and Letchie was tellin’ our fellow townsmen that he had a suspicion right at the beginning that Bart was in with the other three in the murder of old Batten. That, he said, was why he insisted on Bart bein’ allowed to ride on with the posse--so he could watch him. As it happened Bart got away. No question in his mind, Letchie Welton gave down at the hearin’, but that Bart had killed Palto to prevent him squealin’, before ridin’ out to connect up with his share of the loot. “Didn’t he want to stay up all night in order to let Palto go free?” Letchie wanted to know.... As I say, I had my work cut out to keep old Bob from killin’ our deputy sheriff that day.

‘... No, sir, we weren’t exactly right--never have been, Bob and me, since that night in Red Ante,’ Mr. Cotton observed, another time. ‘They talk of shell-shock these days. It wasn’t shells that got us, but we were shocked men just the same. It worked this way: We never could stay long where men were--never could get along in the settlements any length of time. We took up prospectin’ to get up into the mountains alone, but we couldn’t be too close, even to each other, for very long. I’ve seen Bob go apart to smoke of an evenin’, after we’d worked separate ridges all day, and I’ve felt the same way. It was quite a while before we came to know we were so different. I began to see it in Bob, and gradually it worked out that he could see it in me.

‘I wouldn’t have believed it of Bismo, and Bob couldn’t, but that town wasn’t wrought up over what happened in Red Ante, like we were. Seems as if Bob and me took the full shock of that, though we were slower catchin’ on, than young Bart was. Palto’s bein’ a Mexican seemed to make it all right for Bismo. A greaser had murdered a white man and a whole Mexican village of men, women and children couldn’t pay for that.... Always a man of law, Letchie Welton was. Bismo called him a trail-burner for bringin’ in his man, and made him sheriff afterward. He held his job until three or four years back when he was shot from his horse, as I told you, on the trail of Lon Bimlock. They say Letchie was sleepin’ his last sleep before he touched ground that day, havin’ taken Lon’s forty-five between the eyes.’

There was a lot of inexpressible feeling in Elbert’s chest as he listened to certain observations of Mr. Cotton on the relationship between Bob Leadley and his son. It made him draw a step nearer that mystery of mysteries, his own father. ‘Bob was a strong man with men before Bart came,’ Mort once said. ‘Then gradually on that one point they came to think of him as the favorite fool of the diggin’s. Some said he was too easy, some said he was too hard, but all said he was wrong.

‘... But I was tellin’ you about the last days in Bismo. You see Bart couldn’t come back if he had wanted to. It got worse against him as weeks passed and Marguerin wasn’t brought in. Rueda was caught and hung, his last words bein’ that Marguerin had done the killing. Word reached Bismo that Marguerin and Bart were together in Mexico, ridin’ with Monte Vallejo, who was just a bandit-leader down in Sonora in those days, but high up in Sonora politics right now--apt to be the big gun if the Government turns over. Also we’ve heard various times that Bart is still ridin’ with Monte Vallejo--that’s one of the things Bob must have wanted you to know.

‘Bob was down in Mexico five years back and might have come up with Bart, except as he tells it, all at once the rurales began to take an interest in his case. They couldn’t do enough to help him find what he was after. You see the rurales are a strong body of men, workin’ sort of alone-like, mainly on the side of the Government, and hell-bent after all bandits, when they feel like it--’

‘How did the rurales find out what Mr. Leadley was down there for?’ Elbert asked.

‘Now as to that, my mind’s at rest. Letchie wasn’t done for at that time. He tipped ’em off, as I see it--always a man of law, Letchie was. And, of course, the rurales would be interested in a white man down there, lookin’ for his son who was said to be ridin’ with Monte Vallejo, for the rurales have been tryin’ to get their hands on Vallejo for years, but you see the common people like the big bandit, and are not so strong for the rurales, who lord it over ’em and feel important, havin’ the law on their side.

‘Old Bob always kept track of Monte on Bart’s account. He used to bring me translations from the Mexican papers, how Monte had burned this, and beaten his way through that, and how the rurales had just missed capturin’ him. If I was you, I wouldn’t try to cross the Border straight down from here. Ride east for three or four days, takin’ your time and make your crossing at Nogales. You’ll be able to get in there, more quiet and unwatched, and you’re more apt to be closer to the scene of operations of the man you’re lookin’ for. It won’t be long before you’ll be hearin’ of Monte Vallejo’s doings. He’s ’specially active right now. If Bart’s still with him--that’s another thing. Anyway take it easy, an’ take your time--’

‘I know that road south of Tucson to Nogales--worked at Heaslep’s drivin’ a truck,’ said Elbert, ‘I might stop off for a day or two to see a couple of friends of mine--’

‘So long as you don’t tell anybody what you’re out on,’ warned Mr. Cotton. ‘I’m sure Bob would have advised you this way--if he’d had time.’

‘I’ll be careful about that,’ Elbert said, and yet his pulse pricked up at the thought of another sight of Cal and Slim.

VIII

HEASLEP’S AGAIN

HE was actually on the Road, traveling east toward Tucson, Mamie showing up from hour to hour a little better than he could ask or expect. Elbert had to keep telling himself that there was no hurry, no stress, but the urges of all past years rose up in him, trying to make him believe that everything was ahead, instead of here and now.

Expense money to work with, a gold mine back of him; best of all, there was a purpose to carry out; a meaning back of his setting forth. Had he tried to plan it all before leaving the East, he couldn’t have arranged an adventure half so satisfactory as this--not just an aimless ride, no mere purposeless freedom. By some marvelous destiny he had come into the right to venture forth--a quest to work toward, an allegiance to make good with Mr. Leadley and his son, with silence on his tongue all the way.

No, he was not to tell any one--not even Cal and Slim, if they were still at Heaslep’s.

He reached the main buildings of the big ranch shortly after noon, five leisurely days of riding from San Forenso. Approaching the ‘Office,’ faces looked out from cook-house, farrier shop, and other doors and windows. Elbert waved and nodded, but there was no flare of welcome, no adequate answer for him--all eyes fixed on what he rode. He had to wait a minute for Frost-face, who appeared from his back room, nodding curtly. He moved at once to the outer door, where his sleety gaze fixed on Mamie at the far end of the rail.

‘Your’n?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘In the advertisin’ business?’

‘No.’

‘Been workin’ in a movie?’

‘No.’

‘Show horse?’

‘No--’

‘Want a job?’

‘No. Just thought I’d stop off--possibly see Cal and Slim--and some of the boys.’

‘Thought you’d come back to locate. Here’s a letter an’ telegram. Thoroughbred?’

‘Her father was.’

Frost-face moved out to Mamie. The telegram was from Mort Cotton, advising him to wait at Heaslep’s for a letter containing a certain newspaper clipping. The letter already at hand, was the one referred to in the telegram, for Elbert drew out a half-page of a Sunday newspaper and a moment later was deep in the latest Sonora doings. Frost-face’s jerky tones cut in presently:

‘Cal and Slim are out in the northeast range--about fifteen miles. They’ll be ridin’ farther north to-morrow, but you can get to ’em by sundown. Better drive the truck out, though.’

‘The mare isn’t tired,’ said Elbert.

‘Her thorough-breedin’ might wilt down.’

‘She can do fifteen--’

‘Be careful not to let any of the cow-truck out there bite her.’

‘I’ll watch close.’

‘Stop off here for a package of paper napkins and readin’ matter to take out to the range--before you start.’

All that afternoon as he rode, Elbert conned the alleged facts of the newspaper story. Monte Vallejo was said to be greatly enlarging the number of his followers, turning away hundreds of peons because they had no horses. This Monte was certainly a cavalry leader first and last, Elbert reflected.... American holdings threatened; gold and silver mines and oil properties of Northern Sonora, unsafe; General Cordano reported to be establishing garrisons near the big mines in an attempt to forestall seizure, but none could tell when Monte Vallejo would strike--

Elbert reached the distant camp at sundown, but full darkness had fallen, before the final thud of ponies on the range grass, and Slim’s voice called from outside the circle of firelight.

‘... if it ain’t Elber-r-rt!’

And big Cal rocked forward, taking him by both shoulders at once--one of those moments when Elbert wouldn’t have dared to use his voice.

‘What’s this I hear about a she race horse you’re ridin’?’ Slim asked.

Elbert pointed out toward his picket pin, and the two moved toward it. Mamie was led in toward the fire, and examined in all points, her owner being entirely overlooked for the time being.

‘Where did you say you come from?’ Slim asked severely.

‘San Forenso.’

‘Any more like that there?’

‘I didn’t see any.’

‘Somebody leavin’ the country?’

‘She was given to me.’

‘Was he dyin’?’

‘Yes.’

Cal and Slim glanced at each other.

‘Elbert,’ said Slim. ‘You didn’t hurry him off none?’

‘No.’

‘You see, it _has_ been done,’ said Cal. ‘For a hoss like that, it has been done. I recollect hearin’ that old Chester was fought for in his gay young days. Ever hear about that, Slim?’

The other nodded solemnly.

‘Ain’t back to stay, Elbert?’

‘No--’

‘Where you goin’?’

The partner’s eyes checked off each other again, and finally Cal remarked: ‘Looks as if Elbert might need help--’

‘He’s makin’ me restless,’ said Slim.

After supper, the three sat down at a small fire a little apart from the main camp. Elbert was watching himself closely, some tension not to be lured into disclosure of any kind. One fact rested lightly on his faculties at this time. The more that men knew about horses, the more Mamie was appreciated. Cal and Slim had opened a newspaper package and divided a big Sunday paper between them.

‘Please excuse us, Elbert, while we cool down our passions for news,’ said Cal.

A poring silence of many minutes; then from Slim: ‘This fellow’s crazy.’

‘How’s that?’

‘The fellow writin’ this--either crazy, or else there’s goin’ to be a war less than a hundred miles from here!’

‘Who’s fightin’, Slim?’

‘Mexican war--over some oil wells--down San Pasquali way--’

‘Any white men?’