“Heart failure, maybe.”
“Nobody knows. Litman’s nephew came
west, but he never liked to stay there at night. Used to spend all his time here, and sometimes he’d camp on the range rather than go near Black Mesa at night.
“Finally, he rounded up a few head of stock, sold ‘em, an’ drifted. That’s one funny part, stranger. Over two thousand head of stock driven to the place, an’ never more than five hundred came of it.” Dyer nodded his head. “Never seen hide nor hair of ‘em.”
“Tell him about Horan,” Karr suggested.
“Tell him that.”
“Nobody ever figured that out. After Horan
sold out an’ then Litman died an’ the nephew
left, nobody went near the place. One night
Wente here, he rode past Black Mesa—“
“I’ll never do it again!” Wente stated emphatically. “Never again!”
“He was close to the cliff when he heard a scream, fair make a man’s blood run cold, then a crash. He was takin’ off when he heard a faint cry, then moanin’. He rode back, an’ there on the rocks a man was layin’. He looked up at Wente an’ said, “It got me, too!”’ an’ then he died. The man was Art Horan. Now you figure that out.”
“Nobody has lived there since?”
“An’ nobody will.”
Calou chuckled. “I’ll live there. I’ve
got to. Every dime I could beg, borrow, or steal went into that place. I’m movin’ in tomorrow.”
There was animosity in their eyes. The animosity of men who hear their cherished superstitions derided by a stranger. “You think again,” Karr replied. “We folks won’t allow it. It’ll bring bad luck to all of us.”
“That’s drivel!” Calou replied shortly.
“Let me worry about it.” 109
Karr’s old face was ugly. “I lost two boys who tried to climb that mesa, an’ many a crop lost, an’ many a steer because of it. You stay away from there. There’s Injun ha’nts atop it, where there was a village once, long ago. They don’t like it.”
Knauf looked around. “That goes for the Pitchfork, too, mister. Move onto that place an’ we’ll take steps.”
“Such as what?” Calou asked deliberately.
Knauf placed his glass carefully on the
bar. “I don’t like the way you talk, stranger, an’ I reckon it’s time you started learnin’.”
He was stocky, with thick hands, but when he turned toward Matt Calou there was surprising swiftness in his movements. As he stepped forward he threw a roundhouse right. Matt Calou was an old hand at this. Catching the swing on his left forearm, he chopped his iron-hand left fist down to Knauf’s chin, then followed it with a looping right. Knauf hit the floor and rolled over, gagging.
“Sorry,” Calou said. “I wasn’t huntin’ trouble.”
Russell merely stared, then as Calou turned he said, “You’ll have the Pitchfork on you now.”
“He’ll have the whole country on him!” Old Man Karr spat. “Nobody’ll sell to you, nobody’ll talk to you. If you ain’t off this range in one week, you get a coat o’ tar an’ feathers.”
The rain had slackened when Matt Calou rode down into a shallow wash. Water was running knee-high to his horse, but it was not running fast. He crossed and rode through the greasewood of the flat toward the buildings glimpsed in occasional flashes of lightning. Beyond them, dwarfing the country, loomed the towering mass of Black Mesa. When he was still a mile from the house he found the first whitened bones. He counted a dozen skeletons.
Rain pattered on his slicker as he rode into the yard and up to the old stone house. There was a stable, smokehouse, and rock corrals, all built from the talus of the mesa.
Leaving his horse in the stable where it was warm and dry, Matt spilled a bit of grain from a sack behind the saddle into a feed box. “You’ll make out on that,” he said. “See you in the mornin’.”
Rifle under his slicker, he walked 111 to the house. The backdoor lock was rusted, and he braced his foot against the jamb and ripped the lock loose. Once inside, there was a msty smell, but the house floors were solid and the place was in good shape. Opening a window for air, he spread his soogan on the floor and was soon asleep.
It was still raining when he awakened, but washing off the dusty pots and pans, he prepared a hasty breakfast, then saddled up and rode toward the mesa. As he skirted the talus slope he heard water trickling, but when he reached the place where it should have been, there was none. Dismounting, he climbed the slope.
At once he found the stream of runoff. Following it, he found a place where the little stream doubled back and poured into a dark hole at the base of the tower. Listening, he could hear it falling with a roar that seemed to indicate a big, stone-enclosed space. He walked thoughtfully back to his horse.
“Well, what did you find?”
Startled at the voice, Matt looked around
to see a girl in a rain-darkened gray hat and slicker. Moreover, she had amazingly blue eyes and lovely black hair.
She laughed at his surprise. “I haunt the place,” she said, “haven’t you heard?”
“They said there were ghosts, but if I’d known they looked like you I’d have been here twice as fast.”
She smiled at him. “Oh, I’m not an official gho/! In fact, nobody is even supposed to know I come here, although I suspect a few people do know.”
“They’ve been trying to make the place as unattractive as possible,” he said, grinning. “So if they did know, they said nothing.”
“I’m Susan Reid. My father has a cabin about five miles from here. He’s gathering information on the Indians—theirthe customs, religious beliefs, and folklore.”
“And this morning?”
“We saw somebody moving, and Dad’s always
hoping somebody will climb it so he can get any artifacts there may be up there.”
“Any what?”
“Artifacts. Pieces of old pottery,
stone tools, or weapons. Anything the Indians might have used.”
Together, they rode toward the ranch, talking of the country andof rain. In a few minutes 113 Matt Calou learned more about old Indian pottery than he had imagined anybody could know.
At the crossroads before the Rafter H, they drew up. The rain had ceased, and the sun was struggling to get through. “Matt,” she said seriously, “you’ve started something, so don’t underrate the superstition around here. The people who settled here are mostly people from the eastern mountains and they have grown up on such stories. Moreover, some strange things have happened here, and they have some reason for their beliefs. When they talk of running you out, they are serious.”
“Then”—he chuckled–?I reckon they’ll have to learn the hard way, because I intend to stay right where I am.”
When she had gone he went to work. He fixed the lock on the back door, built a door for the stable, and repaired the water trough. He was dead tired when he turned.
At daybreak he was in the saddle checking the boundaries of his land. There was wild land to the north, but he could check on that later. Loco weed had practically taken over some sections of his land, but he knew that animals will rarely touch it if there is ample forage of other grasses and brush. Several of the loco-weed varieties were habit-forming. Scarcity of good forage around water holes or salt grounds was another reason. Most of the poisonous species were early growing and if stock was turned on the range before the grass was sufficiently matured, the cattle would often turn to loco weed.
It was early spring now, but grass was showing in quantity. There was loco weed, but it seemed restricted to a few areas. He had learned in Texas that overgrazing causes the inroad of the weed, but when land is ungrazed the grasses and other growths tend to push the loco back. That had happened here.
The following days found him working dawn until dark. He found some old wire and fenced off the worst sections of weed. Then he borrowed a team from Susan’s father and hitched it to a heavy drag made of logs laden with heavy slabs of rock. This drag ripped the weed out by the roots, and once it was loose he raked it into piles for burning.
During all of this time he had seen nobody around. Yet one morning he saddled up, determined to do no work that day. His time was 115 short, as the week they had given him was almost up, and if trouble was coming it might start the following day. He rode north but was turned back by a wall of chaparral growing ten to fifteen feet high, as dense a tangle as he had ever seen in the brush country on the Nueces.