A Son-in-Law With Sand

by Frederick R. Bechdolt

 

By F. R. Bechdolt.

A Son-In-Law with Sand

There was a slippery litheness about the rider of the outlaw horse that held the pair on the corral fence fascinated. BILL SAVAGE happened to be administering high justice in the Sierra Madre when the new hand was taken on at the home ranch. Returning from the empurpled mountains down beyond the border, where he had accomplished his grim errand, he found his wife and daughter awaiting him on the long veranda. They had watched him from afar, a moving speck upon the tawny plain. Now, when they saw he had come unhurt, they indulged themselves in no further curiosity, knowing that whatever had taken place was not for women's ears.

The ranch house stood on the mesa's edge overlooking the valley's floor for miles. In those days, before the law had come beyond the ragged summits of the Dragoon mountains, a view like this had its decided advantages. The marauding bands of Apaches appreciated the fact and gave Bill Savage's home a wide berth during their excursions into Mexico. So, likewise, did the outlaws who had drifted over the mountains from the San Pedro in recent years. Here in the heart of No Man's Land, where the renegades of three races rode, preying on all comers and on one another, the narrow-eyed Texan sallied forth, sometimes alone, sometimes with his foreman, now and again with half a dozen of his cowboys, hunting them down across the glaring flats and through the sunbaked mountains. Thus, by the wiles of strategy and by bold battle in the open, he made his home safe for his womenfolk and kept his far flung herds from utter devastation.

The morning was young when he rode in from his lonely pasear across the Mexican boundary. After he had kissed his wife and daughter, with that deep tenderness which silent men like him bestow, they set to work to bring him breakfast. While he was eating, the girl sat across the table from him and answered his terse questions. Next to his foreman, who had shared with him the secrets of his grim raids on savage enemies, Molly was his greatest confidant. As he glanced into her piquant young face his narrow eyes grew softer. So they sat there talking over the table, curiously alike in their dissimilarity, and she told him of the new hand.

“Where's he come from?” he demanded.

“Tombstone,” she answered. “The sheriff give him a letter saying he was a good man.” Savage grunted.

“Sheriff wouldn't know a good man ef he seen one,” was his comment.

“I think he's from California,” Molly went on. “He rides a center fire saddle and uses one of those sixty foot ropes. He calls it a reata.” She smiled humorously.

“What's he call himself?” her father muttered.

“Hilton.” She smiled again at his look of surprise. “Nobody seems to know his first name. He's very good looking.”

“Humph!” Savage finished his coffee and rose from his chair. “I'm going down to the corrals,” he told her. “No nickname. Reckon the boys don't like him.”

Rafe Lawton, the foreman, was sitting on the topmost rail of the round pole corral. He turned his head as Bill Savage climbed beside him.

“Get 'em?” he asked.

“Got the half-breed.” The cowman hooked the high heels of his boots on the rail beneath and settled himself on his perch. “Mimbres done slipped off with a bullet in him som'ers. I trailed him five miles by the blood. Reckon he'll be back to make more trouble.”

“I reckon so,” the other agreed. “Yo' ort to of taken me along, Bill.

Savage nodded. “Sooner or later we got to clean out the hull gang,” he growled. “That the new hand?” He jerked his head to indicate the center of a swirling dust cloud wherein the forms of horse and rider appeared, now clearly, now swathed in a brown haze.

“That's him.” Rafe's lips went tight. They sat with their backs bent, their hands folded between their knees, regarding the spectacle in the corral; the older man, dark eyed, broad shouldered, short of stature; the younger, tall and blond, his fine gray eyes aglow with recklessness.

The horse was a large bay; and even in the fog of dust, back bowed and twisting as he was, he showed clean strain: one of those brutes which should have been good clear through but, by some mischance in handling, had been warped to outlawry. His tongue protruded, and at intervals he uttered a deep moaning. Blue light glowed from his eyes. Always he pitched; there was no cessation in his fighting; but never for two moments did he fight the same.

“How come,” the cowman asked, “yo' give him Colonel?”

“Said he could ride 'em all.” Rafe's eyes narrowed.

“Reckon he tol' the truth,” Savage said drily.

“Yo' bet!” The foreman swore with vigor. “He's a better buster than I be.” But there was a note in his voice which showed that the admiration was for the riding, not the rider.

There was a catlike grace about the new hand, a slippery litheness in his ever changing postures, which held the pair on the corral fence fascinated. Four cowboys, who had postponed mounting their own ponies to witness the show, were draped over various other portions of the barrier, their hard young faces alight with interest. Now and again one shot a stream of brown tobacco juice into the dust beneath him. In all of them, as in their foreman, there was a latent gleam of something deeper than mere recklessness; a suggestion which was in complete accord with the big butts of the six shooters dangling beside their lean thighs.

Once the horse reared until the members of the little audience held their breaths awaiting the instant when the front legs would straighten out and he would topple backward. The slim form shifted slightly in the big stock saddle; one booted foot was sliding back in the stirrup; and in a flash, the bay was pitching again. Bill Savage swore quietly.

“He's throwed me twice by that there trick,” Rafe muttered.

Ten minutes later the new hand rode at a gentle fox trot round the corral. Colonel's flanks were heaving; his coat was dark with sweat; the blue light was gone from his eyes. Hilton reined up beneath the spot where the cowman was sitting.

“Good horse,” he cried. “A little lively.”

Bill Savage made no reply; he was looking down into the upturned face; it was a rather handsome face, but there was an unpleasant curl to the lips—a suggestion of cynicism in the smile—and the brown eyes were too aggressive in their boldness.

“Molly, you must not ride that horse,” Rafe told her quietly. “I certainly am going to ride him,” she answered.

“If yo' like him,” Rafe said drily, “yo' can have him on yo’r string.”

“Suits me.” The curl to the rider's lips became more marked. “I'll have him gentled for you fellers in a week or so.”

Bill Savage grunted and climbed down from the fence. What he thought of the matter he was not saying.

Almost every night the young foreman came over from the bunk-house to discuss with his employer such details of the business as needed conference. Thus, sitting on the wide veranda, with their chairs tilted back and their high bootheels resting on the railing, they talked over feed conditions and the sale of beef steers or planned forays on the outlaws who were forever harassing the herds. Two or three times a month, when the counseling was over, there remained various matters of a clerical nature demanding attention. Then Rafe went into the long living room and sat down with Molly, who attended to the bookkeeping and letter writing.

The blind, unswerving loyalty which marked Rafe's service to Bill Savage extended to the cowman's womenfolk. There was no measure to this fealty, nor any question. And during the years since she had grown to young womanhood Molly had taken it for granted that his devotion belonged to her. When she and her mother went to Tombstone, Rafe rode along to guard them against Apaches. He gentled her horse for her, and it was he, more often than her father, who interposed his prohibition when she was about to risk her young person against some of the many perils which were forever lurking about the neighborhood of the home ranch. Of late he had fallen into the habit of coming to the house clean shaven, with a colored handkerchief knotted about his sunburned throat. The other men had noted the change and spoke of it during their foreman's absence. Bill Savage was mutely cognizant of it, and by his tacit acquiescence gave it sanction. It was beginning to be assumed by everyone about the place, that the courtship was well along.

This evening there was bookkeeping to do. When they had finished Molly spoke her mind concerning the affair in the corral. If she owned a greater volubility than her father, she had at least inherited his directness.

“It seems to me, Rafe,” she said, “that if you want to kill a man you could find a fairer way than giving him Colonel to ride.”

“Meaning Hilton?” Rafe smiled broadly. “I didn't notice that it hurt him.”

“That,” she retorted, “wasn't your fault. Why didn't you let him know he was forking an outlaw?”

Rafe's smile faded. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her of the new hand's boast, made in the presence of the other cowboys, that he could ride them all; to which he had responded by bidding him to try the Colonel horse if he felt himself capable. But it was not in his creed to question any man's' word behind his back and something told him that Hilton had a motive in misrepresenting things to Molly. Being as straightforward in his love making as he was in his fighting, he chose to hold his peace.

“It wasn't fair,” she persisted, “just because you don't like him——”

“Now, Honey, how do I know whether [ like him or not?” His smile returned and there was a light in his young face which softened all the reckless lines and made it very tender. “All I've got against him is his ways. Been here four days, and makes as free as if he'd been raised with the family. Yo' never see Owlhéead or Bob West buzzin' round yo' like he does.”

“I'd like to see them try it once,” she declared warmly.

“Well,” he shrugged his broad shoulders, “mebbe they ain't so good lookin', but they are good men. I'd a heap rather see yo' with one of them, somehow, than with him.”

“You let me tend to my own business, Rafe,” she bade him quietly. “I reckon I am old enough.”

“There now!” he told her softly. “Le's not be gettin' mad about it. I'm sure I don't aim to go interferin' with yo', dear. But I would like this Hilton feller better if he'd make his kicks to me.”

He rose. And before he left the room he bent over and kissed her gently. But she had sensed the repression which had come over him when she had repeated the new hand's accusation, and—not altogether wrongly—she had put it down to jealousy. It was the first time that any difference had arisen between them and, being accustomed to an unquestioning fealty from him, she felt it the more keenly.

A week after his return from the Sierra Madre, Bill Savage stood beside his young foreman watching Hilton swing into the saddle. The Colonel horse stood without a tremor while rider leaned forward and twitched the leather blind from his eyes, then stepped out, as docile as a lady's mount. The new hand nodded at the cowman.

“Nothing wrong with him,” he called. “He's been mishandled, that's all.”

“Meanin' me,” Rafe remarked quietly.

Molly was on the wide veranda. She waved her hand as Hilton passed. His teeth flashed and he waved in answer. Bill Savage made no comment on the whole proceeding other than a grunt.

That day Rafe rode far up the valley with Owlhead Johnson to look into the condition of a waterhole. Swinging homeward in a wide semicircle, they cut the Tombstone road in the foothills of the ragged Dragoons and came upon a pair of freighters resting their teams before the long climb over South Pass.

“What's new?” the foreman asked when they had pulled up beside the outfit. The elder teamster stroked his grizzled mustache reflectively before replying.

“Mimbres,” said he after some moments, “is back in Galeyville, He give it out two nights ago that he aims to kill Bill Savage or any of his men on sight.”

Evening was well along when Rafe finished his belated supper and came over to the ranch house with the news. He heard the murmur of voices through the dusk. Molly was sitting on the veranda steps with the new hand. They moved aside to let him pass, and she barely lifted her face to speak to him.

“Reckon,” the cowman said when he had heard the tidings in the living room, “I'll have to make a better job of Mimbres next time.” They sat there for an hour going over this and other matters of business and when the foreman departed the pair were still on the front steps.

“Mr. Hilton,” Molly called after him, “has promised to break Colonel for the side saddle.” Rafe wheeled and faced her.

“Molly, yo' must not ride that hoss,” he told her quietly. She flushed at his tone.

“I certainly am going to ride him,” she answered.

Had he been as apt at wooing as at warfare he would not have said that. Thereafter when evening came he usually found Bill Savage inside the house; Molly and the new hand had taken possession of the veranda.

Life went along by day as usual. Every morning the riders sallied forth in pairs to visit the far corners of the range, returning at nightfall to report conditions to the foreman. Occasionally more news drifted down from Mimbres: the robbery of the Lordsville stage, the slaying of a sheriff's deputy in the Dragoons; but beyond his defiance the outlaw had done nothing to Bill Savage. The men fell to speculating as to what his next move would be.

“Me,” the new hand announced during one of these bunk-house discussions, “I'd like to see that hombre long enough to line my sight on him.” The silence with which the remark was received was in part due to the fact that the others were accustomed to saying nothing of their intentions in such matters, in part because the cowman had walked in on them.

The days passed by. Hilton's evening calls on Molly had become a regular thing.

“Gall is what a man needs,” Soldier Jones told his companions in the bunk house. “Gall and a line of talk. That gets the women. But what I cain't understand is why Bill stands fer him.”

“Reckon Bill's lookin' fer a han'some son-in-law,” was Owlhead Johnson's cynical comment. “Yo' notice he done took this Hilton feller along with him when he rode over to Skeleton Canyon today, instid of Rafe?”

“Well, any time Bill rides where there is trouble, he'll have Rafe with him,” Bud Wilcox prophesied. But like many another prophet Bud merely voiced his own hopes. The departure of the cowman and Hilton in each other's company became a frequent spectacle. Rafe rode alone and a puzzled line was beginning to show between his brows.

One night early in August three riders long overdue returned to the home ranch and the youngest of them came on a led horse, bound by his rawhide riata across the saddle with a bullet hole to mar his forehead.

He sat swaying in the saddle. “There were too many of them.” he said at last, slowly, as if his tongue had stiffened.

Soldier Jones told the expected story with quiet terseness.

“Us three was workin' a bunch of lean cows down through South Pass. Me an' Owlhead was behind and Bud had rode ahead. We heard the shot and when we got to where the kid was layin', they opened up on us from behind the rocks. The' must o' been four or five of 'em; but we stood 'em off till dark an' then they quit. Twice I got sight of Mimbres.” He cursed himself and his luck with drawling intensity. “Both times I overshot.”

“Wish I'd had your chance.” The voice was Hilton's. Soldier Jones did not so much as look at him, but his eyes were narrow as he addressed Savage.

“They're headed back fer Galeyville, Bill.”

“We'll bury Bud,” the cowman said, “then saddle up.”

Dawn was beginning to leak over the eastern horizon when the eight riders set forth. For the first time in weeks Savage was keeping his foreman by his side. The others trooped behind. So through the long day they traveled northward along the valley's level floor. The flaming sun dipped behind the ragged summits of the western mountains; dusk came on.

“The's eight or ten in the gang,” the cattleman told Rafe, “an' the hull town's afraid of 'em. We'll stop at ol' Castenada's corral. He's honest. I'll send him in ahead of us to find out where they be.”

Midnight found them within the adobe walled enclosure where Santa Cruz Castenada sold feed and hay to passing teamsters just outside Galeyville. Their cigarets made little flecks of red in the blue darkness; occasionally one of the horses shook himself, rattling the stirrup leathers; within the flat roofed house a Mexican was playing an accordion. So they waited for a good half hour, until the swarthy old proprietor came silently out of the shadows and whispered to their leader the tidings for which he had been sent. When he had gone again, Bill Savage spoke.

“Mimbres is eatin' in that little adobe place acrost the street from the Owl Saloon,” he said. “I'm goin' in to get him. Yo' boys stick here till the shootin' starts. Hilton, yo' come along with me.”

Rafe Lawton had taken a step toward him as he was speaking. At those last words the foreman halted abruptly. He stood silent, caught in the middle of his stride, as if the thing which he had heard had frozen him. So, while the two men turned to their ponies tightening the latigos, and after they had swung into their saddles, he remained without stirring, unconscious of the murmurs of incredulity about him and of all else save the one fact—Bill Savage had chosen another man to ride with him where there was danger.

The Texan said no word to his companion. The soft thud of the ponies' hoofs in the deep dust of the roadway was the only sound save the faint creaking of their stirrup leathers. Buildings appeared on either side, vague blots of shadow deeper than the night about them. The low adobe houses became thicker; and from windows ahead of them streams of radiance cascaded into bright pools of orange lying athwart the street. Sounds came: the click of billiard balls, the murmur of men's voices; somewhere a woman laughed. Savage raised his hand abruptly and reined up. In silence he dismounted and the new hand followed his example. A hitching rack stood at the road's edge. They threw the reins across it. The cowman pointed to Hilton's rifle in its sheath beneath the stirrup leather and started on. The other plucked the weapon forth with sweating fingers and ran to overtake him.

With the swiftness of a striking snake, the outlaw seized the coffee cup and threw its scalding contents into the cowman's face. His right hand reached for the big revolver.

The restaurant was in the middle of the block, a one-story adobe. The door was blind. They halted beside the single window. Within the place a man was sitting by a table. The Texan's narrow eyes grew hard as they rested on the solitary figure. His hand fell on Hilton's shoulder and he spoke for the first time since they had left the corral.

“Hold the door till the boys come.” He pointed to the saloon across the street. “Them outlaws is over there. They'll bile out when the first shot is fired.” He started to take a step but Hilton gripped him by the elbow.

“Where are you going?” he whispered.

“I'm goin' in here to get Mimbres,” Bill Savage answered. With that he opened the door very quietly. For a bare instant he stood on the threshold; then he went in and closed the door behind him.

A single lamp hung from the low ceiling, lighting the room from end to end. Four or five round tables, which had in days gone by served poker players in some saloon, were ranged along the middle of the floor. The place was too narrow for more than the one row. At the third table Mimbres sat.

The lamp's yellow rays revealed his features in hard profile; the gray eye slitted by its heavy lid, the hawklike nose, the drooping wisp of mustache. They bathed the big ivory butt of the revolver which hung beside his thigh. So, during the instant of the cowman's silent entrance, he sat busy with knife and fork. The sound of the door's closing made him look around. The knife and fork clattered upon the plate. Bill Savage spoke.

“Jest keep yo'r hands above the table,” he said quietly. His own right hand was resting on the butt of his shooter. Now as he came on down the room his eyes remained fixed on the eyes of Mimbres. The outlaw sat rigid. He made no sound. His gaze alone moved, shifting slowly with the movements of the Texan, Bill Savage halted beside him.

“I'm goin' to kill yo', Mimbres.” His grim face seemed to have grown a full shade darker as he made the announcement and the eyes were like two gleaming lines of jet. “But I'll give yo' an even break.” With his foot he shoved back the chair opposite the outlaw. He sat down and laid both his hands upon the table.

“Now,” he added the supreme epithet of insult, “when yo' are ready, commence.”

Silence followed, save for the rattling of dishes out in the kitchen. The two regarded each other across the table, unwinking, immobile as a pair of a pair of statues. The seconds dragged on by. Small drops of perspiration appeared on the desperado's forehead. His lips squeezed to a tight line beneath the drooping mustache. Then, with the swiftness of a striking snake, his left hand moved. He seized the coffee cup and flung its scalding contents into the cowman's face. His right hand swept under the table. It clutched the big revolver. But even while the weapon was coming forth from its holster, the fingers relaxed.

Bill Savage wiped the blinding fluid from his eyes with his free hand, as soon as he had fired the shot. Mimbres was sagging forward in his chair, his head upon the table, dead. The Texan bestowed one brief look upon him and rose.

The kitchen door opened; a frightened face appeared; it vanished and another door banged in the building's rear. Voices sounded out in the street. Then the hoof-beats of a running horse came in rapid diminuendo. Bill Savage nodded and, uttering a single grunt, raised his revolver for the second time. The lamp chimney shivered into splinters as the weapon flamed. He reloaded the two empty chambers in the darkness.

While the man from the kitchen fled to spread the news, the Texan crouched behind the table awaiting the coming of the other outlaws.

 

Eighteen hours later Molly Savage was standing beside her mother on the long veranda watching the solitary horseman who came slowly toward them from the northward. Waiting was an old ordeal with these two; they had learned long since that silence made it easier for both of them. So neither spoke until at last the forms of man and horse grew quite distinct. Then:

“It's Hilton.” The girl's eyes went up the valley and she shook her head. “He rides alone.” Her voice was flat.

The Colonel horse was trembling with weariness in every limb when the new hand drew rein before the house. Dust streaked his sweaty flanks; his eyes were glazed. The man's face was haggard; his mouth hung half open.

“Where's father?” Molly called. He made no answer. She repeated the question sharply. He sat swaying in the saddle looking down upon the women.

“There were too many of them,” he said at last; his voice was thick and the words came slowly as if his tongue had stiffened.

Their eyes searched his and he averted them. Then, with an effort, he went on.

“There must have been twenty of them, and us two there in the middle of the town against them.”

“Where were the boys?” the older woman interrupted.

“They came too late,” he answered hoarsely. “The street was full of rustlers. I waited as long as I could. I don't know how I managed to get out.”

“And you ran away!” Molly took a step toward him as she spoke. Turning abruptly, “Mother,” she said quietly, “you go, get ready. I'll hitch up the mules to the buckboard.”

As she was starting toward the corral Hilton called her name. She whirled on him. Her own voice sounded strange to her.

“You coward! Don't dare be here when Rafe comes back.” As she sped on she found herself speaking her sweetheart's name over and over. Within the half hour she was driving northward with her mother on the seat beside her.

 

It was perhaps a quarter of a mile from the corral of Santa Cruz Castenada to the little eating house. While the cowboys were still on the first hundred yards of that dash, before the buildings closed in on either side and the road became a street, a horseman burst out of the gloom, coming toward them on the dead run. He sheered off and vanished in the darkness. It was the last that any of them saw of Hilton.

Ahead of them, where the pools of yellow light lay athwart the town's one thoroughfare, thin flashes of orange licked the darkness. The angry chorus of the forty-fives assailed their ears. They spurred their ponies toward the spot where half a dozen hard-eyed cattle thieves were pouring lead into the window of the little eating house. Now their own weapons blended in the uproar.

Caught by surprise, the followers of Mimbres faced round to meet the charge. There followed a few moments of scuffling hoofs, of swiftly moving forms revealed in the pools of lamplight and blotted out again in the surrounding blackness; a moment when the noise of firing reached its crescendo. Then the turmoil ended with strange abruptness. The firing ceased; a man was groaning somewhere in the roadway.

Bill Savage emerged from the bullet riddled door of the eating house.

“Things was beginning to get hot,” said he. “Where's Rafe?”

“Somebody hold my horse,” the foreman growled. “I got a bullet through my shoulder.” When he had dismounted he made no move toward his employer but bade one of the others help him bandage the wound.

“Two of 'em dead out here,” Owlhead Johnson told Soldier Jones, “an' Bill got Mimbres. I reckon that will hold 'em.”

They traveled slowly on their homeward journey and they were still far up the valley when Bill Savage, who was riding on ahead, caught sight of the approaching buckboard. He called his foreman to his side.

“There comes the women folks to meet us, Rafe,” said he. The other looked him in the eyes.

“Bill,” he asked quietly, “why did yo' do it?” It was the first word that he had spoken to his employer during that long ride. Savage shook his head sadly.

“Ain't yo' got sense enough to know?” was his reply.

 

Several evenings later Molly put the same question to her father a little differently. She was in the long living-room renewing the dressings on the foreman's shoulder when he came in on them.

“Why,” she demanded, “didn't you take Rafe along with you instead of that coward?”

Bill Savage stood there for a moment watching her. There was a tenderness in her touch as she wrapped the bandages which did not escape him. His eyes lost some of their hardness.

“Becuz,” he told her, “I thought he was a coward.” He saw the bewilderment in their faces and his grim lips relaxed a little. At best a stingy man with words, he went on slowly as if he grudged every syllable.

“Them days we rode the range together I kep' my eye on him. Out in the open flats he was keen to travel in the lead. Wherever the' was chances for ambush, he dropped behind. Always let me get skylined before he topped a rise. That put me next to him.”

He laid his strong hand on Rafe's head and there was fondness in his smile.

“And I reckoned 'twas about time to show him up to some of the rest of yo'. My son-in-law has got to have sand.”