“Don’t worry about Kissling here,” Rimes said, speaking softly. “There’ll be no shooting on the ranch. Her orders, and his-Ben Janish, I mean.”
Presently Jonas said, “I think I will take a ride after I eat.”
“Then go toward the mountains,” Rimes said.
“If you know anything about punching cows, ask Henneker what to do. Arch rode out this morning. We all help with the ranch work,” he added.
“Suppose I just kept on riding?”
“You’d get nowhere. That’s a wall of mountains yonder. There’s fifty box canyons, all of them dead ends. You could climb out afoot, but there’s nowhere to go. There’d be fifty or more miles of the roughest country in the world ahead of you … and no grub.”
“I’ve got to find out who I am.”
Rimes was silent a moment. “Leave it lay. Why don’t you just start off as if you’d just been born? ‘Let the dead past bury its dead,’ as somebody said one time.”
“The dead might not want to be buried, nor the past want to have them buried. I have an uneasy feeling about that.”
Rimes talked of the ranch, the cattle. There had been no beef shipped from here since Davidge died but the range was good. The mountains and the ridges formed almost natural corrals, and the outlaw hands had kept others away. There were thousands of acres between the ranch and the mountains, a restricted range, well-watered and in some cases sub-irrigated by the flow off the mountains.
Rimes left, and Jonas lingered over his coffee, worrying about his problem. Did Henneker know anything? Or was the old man just guessing?
There were clues . .. one was the recognition of the dun’s brand as from the Cherokee Nation, which was an outlaws’ hangout. The one thing he was sure of was that Ben Janish must know who he was and why he was to be killed.
And there were the letters and the legal document in his pocket, which so far he had not had a chance to examine.
Was he Dean Cullane? The letters he had found in his pocket, addressed to that name, would make it seem so, but somehow he was uneasy over the name. Might he have stolen them? Or offered to carry them for Cullane? None of the reasons he could think of made much sense.
He was feeling restless. His headache had dulled to a persistent throb that kept him on edge, and he was in no mood to be with people. He needed to get off by himself, to think, to plan, to try to find a way out.
Ben Janish would soon be coming to the ranch, and Ben would no doubt try to finish what he had begun. But what would be his reaction when he found the man he had tried to kill waiting for him?
Fan came into the room. “If you want to ride and you think you can handle that dun, you might check out my beef for me. I’d like to get an idea what there is that’s ready to ship.”
“I don’t know,” he said, rising. “I don’t know what I know about cattle. Or even if I can ride.”
“If you can ride that dun you’re a better man than Kissling or Cherry. He threw both of them.”
Several spare ropes hung in the blacksmith shop which occupied a corner of the barn. He chose one and went to the corral. Could he use a rope? It felt natural in his hands, and he supposed he could.
Rimes was close by when he let himself into the corral and faced the horses. They circled warily, keeping away from him.
He looked at the dun and held out his hand. “Come here, boy,” he said, and the dun came.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” Rimes muttered. “I never saw the like.”
Kissling had come out of the bunkhouse, and he stood watching. Henneker, who had come riding up on a sorrel pony, stopped near Fan. “Now there’s a funny thing,” he said to her. “That horse knows him.”
“But how could it? He just got here, and that horse was a stray we picked up on the winter range.”
“Sure, I brought him in,” Henneker said dryly, “but I still say that horse knows him. Ma’am, something’s wrong here, almighty wrong.”
The old man looked down at her suddenly. “Don’t you go gettin’ any case on that man, ma’am. He’s a bad one.”
“The dun doesn’t think so,” she replied.
Henneker snorted, and rode toward the corral.
The man who called himself Jonas walked the horse out of the corral holding its mane, then saddled up. As he moved he tried just to be guided by those automatic movements that seemed not to have been affected by his accident.
When he had finished saddling the horse Fan Davidge had come up close behind him. “Jonas, who are you? Why are you here?” she asked.
She had spoken in a low tone, and he responded in the same way. “You know as much as I do. As far as I know, my life began half an hour or so before I got on the train where Rimes found me. That’s all I know.”
When he had mounted the horse he rode off without the dun so much as humping its back. She watched him go, sitting erect in the saddle, a handsome figure of a man. Then she walked back to the house, where Arch Billing was waiting.
“Arch, you don’t suppose he’s a government man?”
“How could that be?”
“Wells Fargo might have trailed some of them. He might be a United States marshal. He told me the dun’s brand was from the Cherokee Nation.”
“You mean you think he’s one of those Judge Parker gunslingin’ marshals workin’ out of Fort Smith? That’s a long way off.”
“He could be from Denver or El Paso.”
“Don’t you believe it. Ma’am, he’s a bad one, and I’d stake my life on it. Did Hen tell you what he did to Kissling?”
“Kissling had it coming.”
“It was the way he did it. Like a man slapping a boy around. Kissling didn’t worry him, not for one minute. He never even got to his feet, and he nearly killed the man. And you know something else? He didn’t care. He just didn’t care one way or t’other.”
For several minutes neither spoke, and then it was Arch who said, “We’ve been used by Ben Janish and his outlaws, so maybe we can use this stranger. Maybe this man is the one to rid us of Janish.”
“How?”
“He’s a loner. You can see that. He came out here for something, we don’t know what, but he don’t care whether school keeps or not. The way he sizes up to me, he’s the kind would charge hell with a bucket of water.”
“Ben Janish would kill him.”
“And he might kill Janish. They might even kill each other.”
“Is that what you’re hoping?”
“Ma’am, I never had no family. None but you and your pa. All I want is to see you with this here ranch and free of them. I’d like to see you with a man … the right kind of man.”
“Thanks, Arch.” After a pause she said, “I don’t want him killed.”
He looked at her. “Ma’am … don’t. He’s a bad one. I can tell.”
“Just the same, I don’t want him killed.”
The man who called himself Jonas rode toward the mountains. He reached for the gun in its holster and it slid easily into his hand … too easily.
He reholstered the gun and thought about his problem. There had to be a record. When a man turned up missing inquiries were made – unless he was one of those footloose ones with nobody to care. But somebody, somewhere, would know.
He was feeling better. To wait here for Ben Janish was foolish. What he must do now was to get away, to find out something about himself, to discover who he was and why he had been where he was, and why Ben Janish had tried to kill him.
He rode across the flat valley floor, where the pasture was good. The stock he saw was in good shape, much of it ready for shipping, but it was high time some of the older stuff was moved out.
There was plenty of water in the several streams running down from the mountains, and he could foresee only two problems for the ranch. The first was the necessity for shipping. Unless the older steers were moved out and sold soon, the range would be overstocked and soon overgrazed. The second problem was the question of winter feed. Unless a lot of hay was cut they were going to have a time getting through the winter.
On thin snow most of the stock would do all right. They would be able to get at the grass for limited grazing, but if there was any kind of a fall of snow the canyons would be snowed in and much of the range would be covered too deep. The outlaws were good hands up to a point, but they had no interest in the cattle, and they did not relish the idea of cutting and stacking hay – hard work at best.