Chapter One
Chris and Kite and Vicente were already half down the slope when we came out of the trees three riders spread out and running hard, waving their sombreros like they could smell the mescal we'd been talking about all morning. This new man, Tobin Royal, was next to me holding in his big sorrel I think just to show he could hold himself, too, if he wanted. He was smoking a cigarette and squinting through the smoke curling up from it.
At the bottom of the grade, looking bleached white in the big open sunlight, were the adobes of Brady's Store: one main structure and a few scattered out buildings and a corral. Brady's served as a Hatch & Hodges stage line stop, besides being a combination store and saloon for the half dozen one loop ranchers in the vicinity. The one we worked for the El Centro Cattle Company was bigger than all of them put together twice and just the eastern tip of it came close to touching Brady's Store. Chris and Kite and Vicente and this Tobin Royal and I were gathering stock from the east range, readying for a trail drive and we felt we deserved some of Brady's mescal long as it was handy.
By the time Tobin and I rode into the yard, the others had gone into the saloon side of the adobe and I saw a bare headed, dark haired man leading their three horses over to the open stable shed that attached to the adobe. He looked around, hearing us ride in, and I saw then that he had only one arm.
For a moment he stood looking at us; then he turned, leading the horses away, moving slow like he either had all the time in the world or else his mind was on something else.
As we swung off, this Tobin Royal called over to him, 'Hey, boy, two more here!' But the onearmed man kept going like he hadn't heard. Tobin stood looking at the rumps of the three horses moving into the stable. He let his reins drop and he moved a half dozen slow strides toward the stable.
A quirt was thonged to his left wrist and it hung limp at his side opposite the long barreled Navy Colt on his right hip.
He was a slim, good looking boy, but he never smiled unless he said something he thought was funny, and he liked to pose, as he was doing now with the quirt and his hat tilted forward and the low slung Navy Colt. In the few weeks he'd been with us I'd learned this about him.
I started to bring the horses and he turned his head. 'You keep them horses over there.'
'What's the difference? I'll take them over.'
'Just stay where you are.' His gaze went back to the stable as the one armed fellow came out of the shadow into the sunlight again, and for a moment Tobin just stared at the man.
'Are you deaf or something?'
The man turned to Tobin and his eyes looked tired. They were watery, and with the bits of straw sticking to his shirt and pants he looked as if he'd just slept off a drunk in the stable. He was about thirty, a year one way or the other. He didn't answer Tobin, but came on toward me.
'I asked you a question!'
He stopped then and looked at Tobin.
'I asked you,' Tobin said, 'if you were deaf.'
'No, I'm not deaf.'
'You work here?'
The man nodded. 'You're supposed to answer when somebody calls.'
'I'll try to remember that,' the man said.
The temper rose in Tobin's face again. 'Listen, don't talk like that to me! I'll kick your hind end across the yard!'
The tired eyes looked at me momentarily. He came on then and took the reins and started back toward the stable with the horses. Tobin called to him, 'Water and rub 'em down now . . . you hear me?' He stood looking after the horses for a time, then finally he turned and started for the adobe as I did.
'You didn't have to talk to him like that.'
Tobin shook his head disgustedly. 'Judas, I hate a slow moving, worthless man.'
'He had only one arm,' I said.
'What difference does that make?'
'Maybe it makes him feel bad.'
'It don't make him walk slower.'
'Well maybe some men it does.'
Tobin opened the door and walked in ahead of me over to the bar that was along the left hand wall where Chris and Kite and Vicente stood leaning and drinking mescal, and he said, 'Whiskey,' to Brady standing behind the bar.
Brady was looking toward me, waiting for Tobin to get out of the way. 'How you been, Uncle?'
Brady said to me.
'Fair,' I told him. 'How've you been?'
'Good.' He smiled now, that big, loose faced, double chinned smile of his. 'It's nice to see you again.'
'I want whiskey,' Tobin said.
Brady looked at him. 'I heard you, Sonny. You can't wait till I tell a friend hello?'
I got to the bar before Tobin could say anything.
'Joe, this is Tobin Royal, a new man with us.'
Tobin nodded and Joe Brady said glad to meetyou, because he was a businessman. He sat the whiskey bottle on the bar and poured a drink out of it. Tobin emptied the hooker, and touched the bottle with the glass for another. But this one, after Brady poured it, he took to one of the three tables that were along the other wall, where the stage passengers ate. He sat down with the drink in front of him and started making a cigarette.
Joe Brady nudged the mescal bottle toward me.
'What's he trying to prove?'
'That he's older than he is,' I answered. I could hear Vicente telling a vaquero story and Chris and Kite were listening, knowing what the ending was, but waiting for it anyway. They didn't have much to say to Tobin, because the first day he joined us he had a fight with Kite.
Kite had been a Tascosa buffalo skinner, a big rawboned boy, but Tobin licked him good. Tobin always stayed a few steps out from them, like he didn't want to be mistaken for just an ordinary rider.
'I see you got a new man too,' I said to Brady.
'That's John Lefton,' Brady said. 'He came here on the stage a few weeks ago . . . got off like he expected to see something. As it turned out, he'd paid the fare as far as his money would take him . . . which was to here.'
'What's he running away from?'
'Did you see him close?'
'You mean the one arm?'
Brady nodded. 'That's what I think he's run ning from.'
'Well, it's too bad. How'd he lose it?'
'In the War.'
'Well,' I said again, 'it's better to lose it that way than, say, in a corncrusher. What side was he on?'
'Union.'
'Don't hold it against him, Joe.'
'Hell, the War's been over for eight years.'
'You felt sorry for him and gave him a job?'
Brady shrugged. 'What else could I do?'
'He looks like he drinks.'
'He about draws his wages in mescal. But he does his work . . . better'n the Mex boy and even took over the bookkeeping.'
'It's a terrible thing to see a man down like that.'
I heard the screen door open behind me and Brady mumbled, 'Here he is.'
