Trails to Two Moons/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
A saddle-colored horse, dust streaked and weary, topped the long rise of the Poison Spider Divide and, willing enough to obey the slight tug at bridle, shambled to a halt on the crest. The rider, a shrunken figure in overall blue under a flapping black hat, straightened a bit in his seat and looked down on the town of Two Moons in the hill pocket. Always in the Big Country there is this pleasurable prick of surprise when the last billowing divide of an interminable succession falls below horse's hoofs to reveal destination. After thirty miles of desolation—ranked buttes like organ pipes shooting into the blue; bald mesas; leprous waves of alkali hills—first sight of town crashes on the dulled senses like smitten iron.
Shabby, both horse and rider. No pride of the sleek-limbed cutting horse, aristocrat of the cow outfit's remuda, showed in the beast's slack neck and limp ears; in his dull eye no spark of deviltry awaiting opportunity to flare into open revolt. Christian—for that was his name—was earth-born in a land where the horse is long. The man who rode him was plebeian, loutish even in the careless sag of his overalls tucked into square-toed boots, the hump of his collar high round his ears. His wizened face was all fallen into hollows and crevasses beneath protuberant cheek bones and outstanding ears; skin above the scraggy gray beard baked a pipestone red; blue eyes which never cleansed themselves of dazedness. His features seemed to be set in a perpetual substrata of frost.
This was Old Man Ring, the sheepman of Teapot Creek come to Two Moons to tell the sheriff of Broken Horn something important.
Never before in his drab life of grubbing had Old Man Ring anything important to tell anybody. Never, even, had he been important in himself except in a limited way and that a bread-winning way—a hard-necessity way. The Big Country round about distinguished him above his fellow sheepmen only because he was the father of Hilma Ring. And Hilma Ring was counted a peach—a loo-loo.
"You, Christian!" Old Man Ring laid blame for the halt on his horse and querulously jerked at the bit. Christian sighed and took the down grade at what long years of service had established as a courtesy trot. They drew nigh the Thirst Cutter Saloon, outpost of Two Moons' convivial welcome. Old Man Ring turned yearningly in his saddle and caught a whiff of ardent spirits wafted out from swinging screen doors. But, no; he had something important to tell the sheriff of Broken Horn. "You, Christian!" Again a yank at the bridle. Main Street received them.
In those days before the railroad Two Moons was a scrawny town even in the full flush of its boom. Seat of the new county of Broken Horn, but recently cut out of the anarchy of No Man's Land and not yet smoothly geared to the machinery of law, Two Moons was scarce two decades beyond that dim historic time when its site was that of an Indian massacre. Just a plot of buffalo grass where the Poison Spider and Prairie Dog converge.
When Pack Saddle Owens hauled logs down from Piney Cañon and built his general store Till Driscoll was trail boss of the pioneer herds of longhorns up from Texas. Till stocked his outfits from Pack Saddle's store, and another store sprang up, and another. So came Two Moons—a cattlemen's town—to squat down in the hill pocket in the heart of the Big Country; the saw-tooth range of the Broken Horns behind, and before it more square miles of fat range land than a man dared reckon by hundreds.
A cattlemen's town it remained as long as freight wagons had to haul one hundred and seventy miles up from the nearest reach of the Union Pacific—as long as the bunch grass grew fat and no man stretched wire between Denver and the Dominion Line. But a new railroad rocketed down in a north-and-south slash through the wilderness, and freight wagons had to haul only forty miles. A stage appeared. Two Moons began to change.
A government land office opened on Main Street. Then, as flies to the honey pot, came straddling and stumbling across the bad lands, first the unlovely hordes of the homesteaders, "nesters", in the vernacular of the cattle clan; then the sheepmen with their devastating flocks to contest the range, which the nesters did not fence, with the cattlemen, who abominated sheep a little more than they did barbed wire. There was an upheaval in the town's social life. Where one saloon had served the boys in from the fall round-up, five, six—a dozen must needs mushroom along Main Street. And in the saloon, as nowhere else, caste lines were laid down in increasing bitterness. The Capitol, over whose bar Till Driscoll's 2800-pound steer spread his six-foot span of horns as a sign for the faithful, was exclusively the drinking place of the cattle clan; a sheep herder put his foot on dynamite when he eased it against the Capitol's rail. By the same code a cow-puncher never visited the Granger or the Homesteader unless his credit at the Capitol was utterly depleted; then he gave his patronage to the pariah barkeepers with an air of condescension.
Main Street, as Old Man Ring saw it this day of his coming to town, was a block wide and four long. False fronts of tin and wood reared themselves gawkishly over one and two-story pine stores. Here and there a lot given over to tumbleweed gaped like a missing tooth. To right and left of Main Street houses of the townspeople—for the most part tar-papered boxes extravagantly painted in ocher and blues—trailed down to hide among the cottonwoods along the banks of the streams, where some Crow families had their tepees. Dominating the whole clutter of Two Moons was the new courthouse and jail at the far end of Main Street, a prideful extravagance of brick hauled at untold dollars of tax money by freight wagons from Lost Soldiers, on the railroad.
Old Man Ring jogged down Main Street straight to the courthouse. Tying Christian to the horse rail, he entered and blundered his way to the door marked Sheriff. Within the bearer of tidings found Sheriff Red Agnew, a Viking with a flaming beard cascading down to the charm on his watch chain; a man of fearsome mien, whose eye seemed constantly searching the waistcoat of a quondam visitor to select the tidiest place to put a bullet. Red Agnew had been elected to the shrievalty of Broken Horn largely on his looks; he seemed designed of nature to be a sheriff. Moreover, he was the sheepmen's candidate; sheep money had financed his campaign, the cattle clan said.
Without preliminaries Old Man Ring launched into the mission which had brought him thirty miles from his home ranch on Teapot Creek. He spoke with a burring of the gutturals which thirty years away from his native Denmark had not sufficed to erase:
"Jed Monk on Teapot five miles below my place is murdered. The Killer, he does it."
Bang! Sheriff Agnew's heels slid from desk edge to floor. His huge body straightened itself alertly. "Murder!" he echoed.
"Yes, murdered," Old Man Ring placidly repeated. His frost-bound features changed by not so much as a wrinkle. He was standing on one foot like a tired horse; the toe of the free boot kicked languidly against the heel of the other. "It is the Killer does it because I saw him."
"Where—when?" the Sheriff snapped.
"Last night 'bout sundown when I ride by Bad Water Breaks. I look for that white-faced mulley cow of mine which makes always to go by her calf down in Jed Monk's corral which I sold to him. I hear a leetle shot—bim!—away off near Jed Monk's house, and I ride there. So I am going through the breaks—'nother leetle shot—bim!—this time leetle closer. I cut across Bad Water Breaks in a hurry and soh" Old Man Ring interrupted his narrative to rummage for a bandanna and blow his nose. He was calm as a graveyard monument.
"So when I come to the road I see a man there on a black horse. He sees me and he turns right away over the top of that leetle hill. But I know him. Before, in this town, I have seen him. His name is" he bent toward Agnew's ear and whispered a name. The sheriff's eyes narrowed and a fold of skin ridged the cleft above his nose.
"Then I find Jed Monk there in the road 'bout half mile from his house. Two bullets; one through his head, one by the third button of his shirt. And on his head"
"Same mark as the others?" Sheriff Agnew put in quickly.
"On his head, where it lies a leetle by the side, is a stone 'bout as big as this," Old Man Ring marked off his thumb with fingers clamped below the first joint, "'bout as big as this, that stone lying there on his head."
"The stone on the head—yes, the stone on the head," muttered Agnew. "And you saw him—you got a good look at him, so 's you could go before a grand jury and swear to the name of the Killer?"
"By dam, I saw him gude!" The withered sheepman was roused to his first enthusiasm by the prospect of playing center stage; of appearing before that mysterious body called the grand jury and swearing a man's neck into a noose.
"Come over to Strayman's office and tell him what you 've told me," the Sheriff commanded. He heaved himself up from his chair and led the way down a corridor to the office of District Attorney Strayman. To the prosecutor Old Man Ring repeated this tale of a murder almost in identical words. Orpheus C. Strayman, a little man, all fuss and fury, cracked three knuckles in quick succession at the news Ring had brought in from Teapot.
"Got him, Agnew!" he exploded. "Same man—five murders—stone on the head of each victim. Got him cinched! I 'll call a grand jury"
"Can you get a grand jury that is right?" the Sheriff interrupted. Like him, the prosecutor was by a narrow squeak the successful candidate of the new element come to Broken Horn County to oppose the barony of the cattle clan. In answer Strayman gravely lowered one eyelid.
"That 's up to you, Agnew." Then as his nimble mind leaped ahead to grapple with future contingencies: "There 'll be a fight, Sheriff, a devil of a fight! This Killer, he 's working for the cow interests and I can prove it. Why does he mark the head of each man he kills with a stone? Just to show the people paying him he 's earning his money, by God!
"Run down the list. Old Hard Winter Peters, who ran his sheep over on south prong of Beaver; he homesteaded on the only water hole in twenty miles. First to go, with a quartz pebble laid between his eyes. Jay North up in Rainhole; the K Cross outfit claimed he was branding their mavericks and there was hot talk between them. Number Two for North! I tell you, we got to make an example in the courts—got to make an example, or the cattlemen 'll have every homesteader and sheepman from here to No Wood throwing up their hands and dusting back East."
Strayman had worked himself into a fearful passion; his cowlick was roached up like a fighting rooster's crest, and his eyes were beady. The less emotional Agnew turned to Ring:
"Told anybody what you know—this murder business?"
"I tell my girl Hilma. She knows everything I know," the informer from Teapot answered defensively as if he expected his testimony might somehow be invalidated by this indiscretion.
"All right, keep your mouth shut," the Sheriff warned. "We don't want every cowpuncher in town to know what we got up our sleeve. Now, Strayman, when 'll you want this man to testify? "
"Um—let me see. This is Tuesday; be here in my office at nine o'clock Friday morning, Ring. And remember what the Sheriff says: Not a word to anybody—not even to yourself. Friday—yes, Friday—so long!"
Old Man Ring went blinking out into the sun. He rode Christian down to the Fashion Stables and there arranged for the beast's board overnight. It was not to be doubted Christian, approved his master's decision to remain in Two Moons until the following day; even though the drab little horse could not "see some of the boys", the near presence of a fiery bronco who kicked his stall to flinders during the night gave Christian the feeling he was enjoying metropolitan life.
As for Old Man Ring, after he had stoked to repletion at the Rhinoceros Eating House he ambled over to the Homesteaders and had a drink. At the Granger he had another. Also, he met friends. It was the sunset hour and all Main Street was blocked into indigo and pale lemon by fardels of waning light flung down from the crest of the Broken Horns. An hour for confidences.
"I was yust riding by the Bad Water Breaks," Old Man Ring was saying, back to bar and arms spread along the rail expansively, "when I hear a leetle shot—bim!—away off near Jed Monk's house"
Quick night fell and along the black channel of Main Street splashes of light sprayed out from saloon doors. Dark shapes of men waded through these fountains of light. Men met and one said to another: "Have you heard about it? Ye-ah, another murder. C'm on over to the Cloud's Rest and listen to Old Man Ring tell about it. He knows who done it."
"Soh I find Jed Monk like I tell you," Old Man Ring, firm as a jack pine upon his feet and with the liquor in him showing only by an increased dazedness in his eyes, was repeating for the twentieth time. Something of an oratorical quality had come into his voice. "And on his head, where it lies a leetle on the side, there is a stone 'bout as big as this"
Two Moons, alive, stirred by the tale of another murder done, found itself restless under vague premonition. A spirit of portent, raw and rough as the temper of the Big Country round about, rode the night wind. Along the black spine of the Broken Horns fluttered the brooding fires of heat lightning.