The Big Dry. George Garland

both wrong. If the Sacaton Kid shows up, there shouldn’t be a man out to stop him from turning honest. And about a banging—I won’t listen to it.”

      She walked into the house.

      McQueen’s heavy brows lifted. He tied his horse and said to Mason, “Seem’s we got a problem.”

      “And it ain’t Injun trouble,” Sack laughed. “Which reminds me of the Gutache Mesa murders. Victorio, I reckon.”

      “Obviously,” Mason replied. “Five years on a reservation, five arrows in a man. It adds up.”

      “Yeah,” Sack said. “I didn’t know about that. But it adds up, all right.”

      McQueen said, “That’s not the problem, Luke.”

      Mason nodded and lit a cigar. As quiet as he was amiable, he seldom gave advice unless it was solicited; and then he hedged about with soft-spoken replies that might vindicate his judgment if he happened to be wrong. After seven years with McQueen, he remained as well respected as upon his arrival. Reserve and patience had made him rich and admired, though he remained unsatisfied in himself, a man with a prodigious ambition at work inside him.

      Sack said: “Miss Bonnie may be right about not gettin’ in the Kid’s way if he wants to go straight. But I’d be a damn poor deputy not to try and get him.”

      “Bonnie’s high-spirited,” McQueen said. “But I don’t like to hear her talk in favor of an outlaw.”

      Mason’s eyes narrowed for an instant as he felt a twinge of jealousy and uneasiness. Bonnie had shown an odd streak of independence on the way to the house. She might be putting another man alongside him. A part of him boiled, another part of him laughed it off. He felt secure.

      McQueen said, “What would you do, Luke?”

      “Don’t know.” He forced McQueen to place the question again before saying with becoming wisdom, “I might try it both ways, A. T.”

      “Both ways? What do you mean?”

      “You know I’m not good at this sort of thing. Women baffle me. So I humor them. I’d go at it in a way to suit Mr. Sack and Bonnie. Let the outlaw through, if you think he’s coming. I don’t, and I’ll lay odds that he won’t. But in case he does, let him come on. Then you’ve got him trapped. Mr. Sack and a dozen cowboys can ring him in.”

      This made sense to Sack. He said: “Bein’ a deputy I can’t gamble on my better judgment, which says he won’t come. I’ve got to think he might do it. And at the same time I’ve got to give him a chance to hand over the sack if he does come—like Miss Bonnie says. So I like your idea, Luke.”

      McQueen said: “I’ve found Luke’s judgment pretty reliable. In fact,” he added, with a chuckle, “I didn’t know I was going to own a mine until Luke told me the Queeny Lode was my property if I wanted it.”

      Sack looked up, a hand pawing at his mustache. “That’s the bonanza a fellow named West discovered, ain’t it?”

      “The same,” Luke replied lazily. “Though there’s no record of West’s claim on file. When he was found with an arrow in his back, I staked it for A. T. He had the operating capital. I didn’t.”

      “Luke just put up the mining brains in the partnership,” McQueen laughed. “But you seem to know a lot about this country, Sack. Ever been here before?”

      “Nope. Just poked through the records at the courthouse and asked a lot of questions here’n there.” He looked at Mason and said: “But about this outlaw. Seems you hit on the right idea in this matter. Much obliged.”

      Luke Mason pretended surprise at having solved the problem. He said, with the air of a man under jest by smarter men, “You two had that figured out ahead of me, and you know it.”

      He took the few steps to his buggy and said: “I’m due back at the mine. Turrentine is within eighty feet of our side of the hill and he’s angling in on the Blind Monk Canyon side.”

      McQueen knit his brows and rubbed his chin. “This Turrentine business—if trouble is smokin’ up there, I’d better talk to Big Dan. Maybe we can settle this thing.”

      “Not yet, A. T. He’s on his claim now. But if he crosses his line by so much as one inch, we’ll tie him up in court.”

      Luke climbed into the buggy and, seeing McQueen’s look of satisfaction, glanced at Sack.

      “Don’t hang the outlaw before you catch him, Mr. Sack.”

      Sack nodded and watched Mason drive off. He was wondering how it happened to be Luke who traveled all the way to Socorro for a deputy; and just what made Luke Mason tick, actually.

      And Mason was driving toward Queeny and Beulah Orbon who operated the Green Palace Hotel, asking just what kind of deputy sheriff Sack would turn out to be. A man he could dominate, or the stubborn kind?

      He shrugged it off and called up an image of Beulah’s dark eyes and soft red lips. She was more interesting in that he knew her intimately and yet really knew nothing at all of what was within her. A tall long-limbed woman of fine figure and poise, she was the item of contention between him and Dan Turrentine, who had named his mine Big Beulah after her. Big Dan could operate in the open in his pursuit of her. On account of Bonnie, Luke couldn’t. Which failed to shake Luke’s confidence. Nothing affected that quality in Luke Mason. Beulah knew this. In a way it kept her jumping, even as it did Bonnie.

      But Turrentine was in the way. Often of late Mason had dropped casual remarks about the saloons, and to McQueen that hinted of trouble, far off and growing, trouble caused by a hill between Queeny Canyon and the Blind Monk. If and when it came, over Beulah, it would be about something else. And it was coming, though it wouldn’t reach any court.

      Near the mouth of the canyon, a lone Apache crossed the road not a dozen yards ahead. As peaceful as you please, Luke was thinking. He stopped the horse and gazed thoughtfully after the savage. Then he caught himself about to speak to his Navajo. He laughed. Indian Joe was several miles south on a little errand.

      3

      THE RIDER OF THE NIGHT

      DARKNESS HAD SETTLED over the Valley when A-T riders caught and held Bonnie’s attention. They moved in muffled trot in every direction.

      She stood on the porch, in the same place where her father and Sack came upon her at about ten minutes of nine. Having listened to Luke’s compromise plan, as related by her parent, and finding it practical enough to silence her, she had watched them enter the bunkhouse without any protest. Sack had a job to do, she admitted resentfully. But her silence was no indication of how she felt about it. In the dark the tight lines of her face didn’t show.

      First, Luke had struck off for Queeny instead of standing by her while she disposed of an odd situation—if the robber came—in her own way. By scoffing at an impossibility, she thought he was ignoring her. Next, she was left alone with a growing fear that should the Kid materialize, the urge of a dozen men to shoot would find outlet in at least one of them.

      Silence was by now a negative, light thing. Then it seemed packed with urgency, seemed to call upon her to do something, to accept what might come with total indifference. She thought of the robber and smiled. He would not come here. He had no reason to risk it, had every reason not to.

      She had turned to go inside the house when a rider entered the yard.

      “Who is it?” she said.

      “Southworth, Percy Southworth. Quite new at the A-T Station, y’know, Miss Bonnie.”

      “Station?” she asked as the cowboy rode up. Then she knew. He was the English cowboy just in from Australia. “You gave me a start,” she said. “But why aren’t you with the others?”

      “We spread out, y’know. Well, a stranger just rode past me toward the horse paddock. When I said, ‘I say,