The Complete Novels of Ernest Haycox. Ernest Haycox

Chaffee left Bannock City by stage early on a wind-bitten morning, caught a train across the range, and dropped off sometime after noon at the yellow station house that served the Roaring Horse country. The Roaring Horse stage was waiting; Chaffee crossed the tracks, sharply watching the driver. Sooner or later the news of his return would be abroad; he couldn't help this turn of events, but he did hope that the tidings might be delayed until he was well into the desert. But as soon as he recognized the driver he knew that little time would be lost in transmitting the fact that he had set foot upon debatable soil again—and was again fair game. That driver happened to be Jeff Ganashayd, one of those fellows who was willing to be all things to all men. There was no malice in Ganashayd; only, he had a tongue never still. And Jim Chaffee's presence, an item of importance to everybody in the county, would certainly put that tongue in motion.

      Chaffee saluted the man cheerfully and climbed to the top seat. "Only passenger, Jeff. Let's go."

      "Sa-ay," drawled Ganashayd, eyes growing wider, "ain't yuh kinder unexpected?" He dropped into his seat and set the team on the homeward trial. "Gosh, Jim, yuh mean to go right into town?"

      Chaffee brushed that aside, having questions of his own. "What's news, Jeff?"

      "Nothin' much an' a little bit of everythin'," opined the stage driver. "Course, I ain't a man to do much talkin'. Minds my own business and says little. The country is full of homesteaders. Yeah. Never saw the beat. Swarmin' in like flies. Mostly folks from the adjoinin' counties. Mack Moran was plugged but is doin' well. Miz Satterlee left the district. Injun Eagle went back to the blanket an' sure give folks a chill. But, sa-ay, the biggest item was a story printed in the paper, tellin' how they wasn't goin' to be no dam and Mr. Woolfridge knew they wasn't all the time. New settlers seems sorter riled about that. Some talk of bringin' somebody to book about, it. But, pshaw, a man'll hear lots uh things foolish. That Thatcher woman drifted back. Heard a story about her—"

      "Back up," said Chaffee with a flat emphasis on the words. "Turn off on this side road, Jeff. I'm goin' up to Cherry's horse ranch."

      "I got to make time," objected Ganashayd.

      "Only a couple of miles out of your way," was Chaffee's calm reply. "What's two miles to an empty stage with an empty driver on it? It'll give you that much more time to cook up a good stiff yarn about me. Anyhow, I ain't walkin'."

      "I know when to mind my own business," stated Ganashayd earnestly. "Won't say a word to nobody."

      "Bear off," insisted Chaffee. So the stage took the side road and closed upon a clutter of ranch houses topped by a windmill tower. Presently they were at the end of the road with a pack of dogs sounding at them. Chaffee swung to the ground. "Pay you next time, Jeff. Tell everybody you saw me. Tell em I'm poor in the flanks and I limp on one leg. Tell 'em I look humble and act humble and feel humble—but that I'm here and I'll see everybody soon. So long, Jeff."

      Jeff Ganashayd went back the side road much faster than he went up. He took the curves on two wheels and laid his long whip across the horses' hips. His glance, ever and anon, raked the reaches around Cherry's horse ranch, and when a httle later he saw a horseman questing northward from the ranch his eyes turned as bright as those of some magpie who had sighted a shoestring. "Sa-ay, won't this knock somebody bow-legged? Jupiter, what a story for Roarin' Horse! I am't told nothin half as good since I saw the man which struck Billy Patterson. Go 'long!" The whip popped and across the desert and down the street of Roaring Horse he charged, brake blocks snarling against the wheels. And since he was a born gossip with the love of an audience he bided his time till the customary crowd had collected. Luis Locklear was just strolling up when Jeff Ganashayd launched a liquid parabola of tobacco juice across the wagon wheel and announced in a sounding voice:

      "Chaffee got off the train this noon, an' I drove him to Cherry's horse ranch He's headin' north. Saw him ride thataway later. He looked mean; he looked awful hard. Never saw a man with so much sudden death in his orbs. Toted two guns an' a rifle. Extra bandolier uh cattridges slung arount his shoulders. And he said—says he to me in a growlin', nasty way: 'Ganashayd, doom is a-comin' down on the haids o' sev'ral gents in Roarin' Horse. I'm out to kill.' S'help me, them was his literal words."

      After that Ganashayd enlarged the topic. But Luis Locklear passed quietly on and into the land office. A little later there was a rider going out of Roaring Horse with quirt flailing down, bound toward the lava stretch where Theodorik Perrine's gang was quartered.

      The Cherrys were old friends of Jim Chaffee's. From them he borrowed horse, gear, and a hasty snack, and headed northward with the sun falling down the sky on his left. The stage was a- whirling rapidly beyond sight, and he knew hardly another hour could pass without the tocsin being sounded. He hated to admit it, yet those ten days in Bannock City had been the same as a visit to heaven. He had worried, but he had been physically idle. And after the slogging labor of the past years, as well as the hard punishment of those few days of fighting, it had seemed to him almost a sinful pleasure to lie dormant while the daylight hours went around.

      He was again full of vital energy. The country of his choice lay stretched into the misty horizons, swelling like the surface of a placid ocean. It was sage and sand, arroyo and butte—the same as the land to the other side of the range; yet somehow it was a fairer land here and he felt freer in it. The peaks were heavy with snow, the bench was lightly overlaid; down in the flat country no snow had so far touched the earth, though the air was shot with the warning of it and the sun was dim above unusual clouds. So he traveled leisurely, timing himself against the hour when he was to meet the ex-Stirrup S men at the old quarters. And around twilight of this short day, he surmounted a knoll to confront the familiar, heart-quickening sight of his old homestead. The cottonwoods marched against the deepening blue, the creek bank was heavy with shadows. And the house sat serenely in the shelter.

      But only for a moment did he feel the pleasure of revisiting. The next moment he was wistfully sad and regretful. A light glimmered out of the cabin windows. Somebody else enjoyed the comfort of the structure he had created with so much sweat and pride and hope for the future. He reined in only a moment, absorbing the picture. Then he spoke quietly to the horse and circled away for Stirrup S.

      "Things change," he murmured. "That's life, I reckon. And if a man doesn't move with the times the ground is cut from under his feet. I must be getting old. Seems like I'm always harpin' back to what used to be. Well, it's hard for a fellow to bury a piece of his life in one spot of the earth and then go away and forget. I'll never find another place like it."

      Twilight was absorbed into darkness. A sickle moon cast a blurred reflection above the clouds, the stars were hidden. And in the desert quietness he became aware that someone followed him. Nothing of sight nor of sound came forward to tell him this; it was rather one of those impalpable warnings carrying across the air to vaguely impinge on his nerves. Some men are given the faculty of feeling such things; some men arc not. It is almost an instinct and comparable to that sense in birds which turns them south and north on the approach of the seasons. Jim Chaffee had felt such warnings before. When he obeyed them he profited; when he tried to reason out the strange fact of their existence he invariably went wrong. He traveled onward, making certain of the warning.

      Presently he shifted his course to right angles and fell into a gully, waiting. "Four-five hours would give them time to get on my trail," he said to himself. "But how would they know where to look? Maybe they figure an old dog always strays home." No signals rose behind. Far off a coyote, lifted its bark and wail to the profound mystery of the universe. Somewhere was a like reply, and that was all. Chaffee tarried fifteen minutes and then went on. Perhaps his senses played him false. Both uncertain and restless he pressed the horse to a faster pace. He passed a solitary pine and a hedgelike clump of juniper bushes; he struck a beaten trail and then the outline of all that had been the Stirrup S home ranch lay dark and obscure in front of him.

      He stopped, oppressed by the tenancy of those chilly shadows. Once Stirrup S had been crowded with life; a light had glimmered from the big house; melody and warmth had dwelt in the crew's quarters. Fine men had walked the yard, proud of all that Stirrup S meant—its vast range; its wide-flung herds. A domain it had been, a little empire apart, a haven and refuge, a sturdy piece of the historic West. Now it was but a cheerless relic of brave dreams