The cowboy paused, licked his lips, then grudgingly nodded. “Yeah. But, hell, even that’s better’n maybe accidently shooting her, ain’t it?”
Jud cast a sidelong glance at Fenwick, lying soggily in the darkened, wet dirt. As he glanced back, he said —“I’ll get a rope.”—and arose off the wooden bucket. “We can hang the young feller last…but we can’t hang this horse-killing bastard until he wakes up. That leaves just this other one for now.”
The youth made a small sound deeply in his throat, then he strained on the chains. The other cowboy looked over, a little sympathetically, and a trifle scornfully “You always run the risk of not succeeding” he mumbled. “I told you that on the ride over.”
Rufe dropped his smoke and ground it underfoot. He did not look at either of the prisoners until Jud came back out of the barn, lariat in hand, then Rufe faced the tall, thin younger range man.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty.”
“Where you from?”
“West Texas…sir…an’ my folks are church-abidin’ folks of the Baptist faith, and I never in my life done nothing like this…. ”
“Sure not,” growled Jud, looking blackly at the youth. “You know some prayers, Baptist boy? You better start reciting them for you and your big, brave, woman-fightin’ friend here.”
The older cowboy eyed Jud steadily. “He’s telling you the truth. We picked him up last winter down in town when we needed someone to mind the horses, chop wood, and help haul water for the
“So he can ride back to Chase and tell him what happened over here?” growled Jud, shaking out a loop, then snugging it back to begin making the eight-inch wrap for a hangman’s knot.
“I won’t!” exclaimed the tall youth. “I swear I won’t. I’ll head west, mister. I won’t even
Jud continued to manufacture his hangman’s knot, acting as though he had not heard a word the youth had said. Then he stepped over close and began peering upwards as though seeking an eave end with enough of a notch or knot to it so that the rope would not pull off.
It was Rufe who finally spoke to the boy. “The penalty for burning folks out is the same as the penalty for stealing their horses or rustling their cattle. Did you know that when you left Chase’s cow camp tonight?”
The youth struggled with the truth for a long while. All three older men watched, all three of them mightily curious about how he would answer. Then he said: “Yes, sir, I knew that.”
Rufe nodded. “But you didn’t really figure to fire the barn, is that it?”
“No, sir, that ain’t it. I figured to fire it, like Chase said we was to do. I figured…burn her barn, and maybe next time her house…and she’ll leave with-out no one getting hurt very much.”
Jud asked: “And if you had a mother or a sister living alone, and some range scum came along to burn them out?” Jud did not wait for an answer; he had found his eave, and twisted to flip the rope ex-pertly up and over, and catch the tag end when it came dangling down.
The older range man watched Jud making the adjustments. After a moment of this he glanced up at Rufe. “Mister, if you’ll fish in my pocket, you’ll find some Kentucky twist, and, if you’d hold it up so’s I could get a chaw, I’d be right obliged.”
Rufe leaned down to get the man’s chewing tobacco, and, when he was that close, the cowboy said: “Hell, he’s only a kid…scairt two-thirds to death…and he didn’t really
Rufe held out the twist, the cowboy gnawed off a corner, and, when Rufe shoved the plug back, then straightened up, he and the older man looked stonily at one another.
Rufe stepped away, reached to yank the tall youth to his feet, whirled him roughly against the barn, face forward, then yanked loose the arm chains with Jud standing off a short distance, watching from an expressionless face.
Rufe spun the youth back to face him and said: “Sit down and take the ankle chains off.”
The cowboy sank down almost as though his legs could not support his spindly frame. He fumbled with the chains while all three older men eyed him. When he was free at last, Rufe said: “If you go any-where even
The youth stared, so Jud repeated it.
The lanky youth spun and fled around the side of the barn. They could still hear him fleeing, one long stride after another, for some little time.
Jud hauled down the lariat and coiled it slowly and thoughtfully. He did not look at the remaining prisoner, not until he had the rope ready to be re-slung from a saddle swell, and snapped it against his legs a couple of times. Then he glanced over. “How about you, mister?”
The cowboy’s answer was quietly offered. “I guess I got to set here. If you ain’t going to lynch me, why then I expect I’m just going to have to set here.”
Jud looked over at Rufe, shrugged, and went over to lend a hand at boosting the rider onto his feet and shoving him along into the barn. This one was not a boy, and evidently neither was he a liar. He could have told the same kind of story, but he hadn’t done it. He was a typical range man: loyal.
He made no secret of it, but by the time he had done this, he had also obviously decided that Rufe and Jud had never intended to hang anyone.
They shoved him down in a pile of hay and left him there, walked out front, eyed Charley Fenwick, and got the chains they had used on the youth to chain up Fenwick. He was beginning to come around when they boosted him up and hustled him down to the same pile of hay, and let him fall. He even muttered some profanity as he rolled and came to rest beside the other rider. Then he looked around. It was just as dark inside the log barn now as it had been two hours before. Maybe it was even darker, although it was hard to tell when a man’s eyes could absorb just so much darkness.
Rufe took Jud out back where they lit up and relaxed in the warm, pleasant night. Those overhead clouds had surreptitiously been broadening, deepening, and thickening ever since sundown, until now, an hour after midnight, they had most of the sky blocked out. And they were low clouds, the kind that normally were rain-swollen.
But the air did not smell exactly right, yet, which Jud commented on casually as he stood, smoking and gazing upward and around as though this was the only thing on his mind.
Rufe flexed his right hand several times, listening to his partner’s comments upon the possibility of rain, then he raised a skeptical pair of eyes and said: “When you get it all sorted out about whether it’s going to rain or not… let’s ride.”
Jud turned. “Where?”
Rufe looked sardonic even in that dismal, ghostly darkness. “Chase’s cow camp. It won’t be the dice table at Tucson, but it’s a hell of a lot closer.”
“What about those fellers in the barn?”
“They’re not going anywhere,” said Rufe, still working his knuckles to loosen them, and keep them loose. “And if you’re worrying about Miz Cane comin’ out to gather eggs in the morning and finding them there…well, they’ll be worse off after that meeting than she’ll be.”
Jud sighed. “All right. But…oh, nothing. Let’s get to riding.”
They went back inside for their horses, and, al-though the chained prisoners could make out most of what they were doing during the process of saddling up, neither side spoke to the other side.
When Jud walked his horse out front, then swung astraddle, that lowering sky was seemingly frozen in place. It did not appear to have increased its rain cloud encroachment at all over the past hour.
In the direction of the main house there was still hushed darkness. This time, as Rufe and Jud left the yard, they did not bother being shadowy about it. In fact, Jud lit a cigarette behind his hat before they had quite cleared the far environs of the yard, and settled back in the saddle looking ahead and off to his left, completely assured that things at the ranch were as they should be.
