He looked at my hat. “You’re sure gettin’ a good hat ruined. Better buy you a new one.”
“I was thinking of that, but it’s a far piece to where I can get one. Not many places this side of San Antone.”
He looked at me suddenly. “San Antone? That’s the wrong direction. Why, there’s places north of us … I don’t think they’re so far off.” Neither of us said much, each busy with his own thoughts. Danny’s clothes were dusty—except for those boots. He’d been working or riding … But where? “Danny,” I said, “we’ve got to go easy. Lay off the Balch and Saddler outfit.”
“What’s that mean?” He shot me a straight, hard look. “They’ve been losing stock, too. There may be somebody else who wants trouble between us so he can pick up the pieces.”
“Ah, I don’t believe it,” he scoffed. “What are they hiring gunfighters for? You know damn well Balch would ride roughshod over anybody got in his way. And as for that son of his—“ “Take it easy. We don’t have a thing to go on, Danny. Just dislike and suspicion.”
“You ain’t been around long. You just wait and see.” He paused. “You been workin’ south of here?”
“Some … Mostly east.”
“Joe Hinge said you’re needed over on the other side. He’s fixin’ to start cleanin’ out our cattle from the Balch and Saddler stuff. If you’re really good with that gun, that’ll be the place for you.”
“It needn’t come to shooting.”
He looked at me slowly, carefully. “That Ingerman, he shapes up pretty mean. An’ Tory Benton … I hear he’s gunnin’ for you.”
He seemed to be trying to irritate me, so I just grinned at him and said, “Ingerman is tough … I don’t know about Benton, but Ingerman is a fighter. He’s tough and he’s dangerous, and any time you go to the mat with him, you’d better be set for an all-out battle. He takes fighting wages, and he means to earn them.”
“Scared?”
“No, Danny, I’m not, but I’m careful. I don’t go off half-cocked. When a man pulls a gun on another man, he’d better have a reason, a mighty good one that he’s mighty sure of. A gun isn’t a toy. It’s nothing to be worn for show or to be flashed around, showing off. When you put a hand on a gun you can die.” “You sound like you’re scared.”
“No. I sound like what I am, a cautious man who doesn’t want to kill a man unless the reason demands it. When a man picks up a gun he picks up responsibility. He has a dangerous weapon, and he’d better have coolness and discretion.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“He’d better have judgment, Danny. That other man who wears a gun also has a family, a home, he has hopes, dreams, ambitions. If you’re human, you must think of that. Nobody in his right mind takes a human life lightly.” He got up, stretching a little. The mud on his boots was drying. He had gotten it somewhere not too far from here, but where? There were other waterholes … the springs Fuentes had showed me and a couple we’d found, but they were over east. Of course, there was also the creek over there. “Seen Ol’ Brindle?” I asked him suddenly.
“Brindle? No. Hope I never do.”
“Better stay away from the creek,” I said casually. “That’s where I saw him last.”
“What creek?” he demanded belligerently. “Who says I been around any creek?” He stared at me suspiciously, his face flushed and guilty. “Nobody, Danny. I was just telling you that’s where Brindle is. Joe Hinge doesn’t want any of us getting busted up by him.” He walked toward the door. “I better be gettin’ back.” He lingered as if there were something else on his mind, and finally he said, “That girl whose box you bought. You sweet on her?”
“Lisa? No. She just seemed to be all alone, and I didn’t know anybody very much, so I bid on her box.”
“You spent a lot of money,” he accused. “Where’d you get that kind of money?” “Saved it. I’m no boozer, Danny, and I’m a careful man with a dollar. I like clothes and I like horses, and I save money to spend on them.” “You fetched a lot of attention to her,” he said. “You brought trouble to her, I’m thinkin’.”
“I doubt it, but if I did it was unintentional.”
He still lingered. “Where at did she say she lived?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
He thought I was lying. I could see it in his face, and I had a hunch, suddenly, that Danny had been doing his own thinking about her. Ann Timberly was out of his class, and so was China Benn. Barby Ann was thinking only of Roger Balch, and Danny was young, and he was dreaming his own dreams, and here was a girl who might fit right into them. If he had taken a dislike to me, which was possible, she might be the reason.
“If she didn’t tell me, it’s because she didn’t want me to know. It was my feeling she didn’t want anybody to know. I think she’s got a reason for keeping herself unknown.”
“You sayin’ there’s something wrong about her?” He stared at me, hard-eyed and eager to push it further.
“No, Danny. She seemed a nice girl, only she was scared about something. She did tell me that nobody knew she was there and she had to get right back.” We talked a little longer to no purpose, and he went out and rode away. I walked to where his horse had been tied. There were several lumps of dried mud that had fallen from his horse’s hooves.
If he had come far, that mud would have been gone before this. The mud had been picked up somewhere not too far off… But where? I was stirring up the fire for cooking when Fuentes came in. He stripped the gear from his horse, noticed the tracks Danny had left and glanced toward the cabin.
Standing in the door, I said, “It was Danny. Had something on his mind, but he didn’t say what. Said he saw Hinge. He wants us to come in. He’s going to work west of here, up on the cap-rock. He’s afraid there’ll be trouble.” After a moment, I said, “I don’t think there will be. I think Balch will stand aside.”
“What about Roger?”
Well, what about him? I thought about Roger, and those two guns of his, and the itch he had to prove himself bigger than he was. I’d ridden with a number of short men, one time and another, and some of them the best workers I’d ever come across … Good men. It wasn’t simply that he was short that was driving Roger. There was some inner poison in the man, something dangerous that was driving him on.
Fuentes changed the subject. “Found some screwworms today. We had better check every head we bring in.”
“Danny wants to work this part of the range.”
Fuentes looked around at me. “Did he say why?”
“No, but I’ve got an idea it’s Lisa. That girl at the box supper.”
Fuentes grinned. “Why not? He’s young, she’s pretty.” All true enough, but somehow the idea worried me. Danny was young and impressionable, and Lisa had been frightened of what she had done. She had slipped away secretly to go to the box supper, and that implied that somebody at her home did not want her to go?
A mother? A father? Or was it somebody else? For some other reason? It was not logical that a family could be in that country long and be completely unknown. So … chances were, they had not been here long. They were living off the beaten track, which didn’t mean too much because nearly everything out here lived far apart.
Still, there was considerable riding around. I thought about her clothes. They had been good enough—simple, and a bit worn here and there but clean, ironed, and prepared for wearing by a knowing hand.
Even if Lisa had only been here a short time, it was obvious she did not want to be found … For her own reasons? Or because of that someone who did not want her away from home?
“Tony,” I paused, “I don’t want to leave here.”
He shrugged. “Joe needs us. He expects trouble with Balch.”
“There will be none.”
“You think, amigo, that because of your talk, he will say nothing?”
“Yes, I do … But Lord knows, I can be wrong.” We packed up what gear we had around the place and saddled up with fresh horses, yet I still did not wish to go. What I wanted was time to ride further south, further east. There were a lot of canyons in the Edwards Plateau country, a lot of places where cattle could be hidden.