THE DEADLY BULL AND THE SILVER FOX
IT was nearly noon the following day when a lone horsewoman rode into
the grove of cottonwoods that stood before the ranch house of Gustav
Tanburt. No one came out to meet her. A few chickens moseyed about,
commanded by a black rooster with a red muffler about his neck and a
redder comb, deeply notched. He gave Mary Temple a wall-eyed stare. A
young calf, tied to a tree on thirty feet of rope, took the occasion
to celebrate Mary’s advent by racing round in a circle, carrying its
tail as if it were broken in the middle, and ending the performance
by encircling several trees with the rope and coming to an enforced,
bawling standstill.
Mary dismounted in a spasm of suffering, watered her horse at a
dripping trough adjacent to a flow of artesian water from a rusty pipe,
lowered the reins over the horse’s head, and walked to the painfully
small and circumspect veranda. She knocked smartly on a weather-stained
door, in which a brown-china knob hung like a loose tooth. Gus Tanburt,
for all the riches that had been forced upon him, clave to the familiar
relics of his days of haphazard struggling.
Mary knocked twice. A large black-green blow fly buzzed about before
her peaked nose, seeming to anticipate the opening of the door. Mary
struck at it viciously, not with the flat of her hand but with her
bony fist. Mary was in no humour to administer punishment with the flat
of her hand. She was in the mood to deliver a haymaker and put her
scant weight behind it.
Shuffling footsteps preceded the opening of the door, and Gus Tanburt
bleared at her from between wind-stung eyelids.
The eyelids had no lashes, and the skin of the rancher’s face was
slick and shiny as an ancient scar. His teeth were few and far
between--yellow fangs in his yielding gums. The breath of his brown
clay pipe nearly asphyxiated his gentle caller.
He glowered at Mary as if she were the tax assessor.
“Where’d you come from?” was his inhospitable greeting.
“I’m riding to Britton,” answered Mary. (Shirttail Henry had coached
her.) “I wanted to know if I couldn’t buy something to eat and a feed
for my horse.”
“Who are ye?”
“My name is Winifred Allison.” (Mary always wished she had been born
Winifred Allison. Most of us have pet names that we wish our parents
had had the sense to bestow on us. Winifred Allison was Mary’s.)
“Where ye from?”
“Fresno.”
“I mean jest now.”
“Oh! I’ve been riding through the mountains from Glenning.”
“Glennin’! That’s a hundred an’ fifty miles t’other side o’ th’ range,
woman!”
“I’m not disputing that, man!” Mary snapped back. “I’m telling you that
I rode from Glenning here, on my way to Britton. What’s the odds? Can
you sell me some dinner and a feed of hay for the horse?”
Gus Tanburt looked over her ridgy shoulder and squinted at her horse.
For a few moments Mary scarcely breathed. But the watery eyes coasted
back to her again, and she knew that the rancher had not recognized the
animal as belonging to Diamond H.
“I got nothin’ fitten to eat,” he told her. “I’m a sick man, an’ I’m
alone and don’t wanta be pestered. Ye c’n put th’ brute in th’ corral
and pitch ’im a couple forkfuls o’ hay, if ye want to. That’ll be fifty
cents. Then if ye c’n find anything to eat in th’ kitchen ye’re welcome
to he’p yerself. That’ll be a dollar. Waterin’ th’ brute is fifty
cents, a’g’in. Two dollars in all. Strike ye right?”
“Oh, yes,” muttered Mary. “Quite reasonable--especially the water,
which is going to waste a barrelful every five minutes.”
“Well, this here’s a desert country, ma’am, an’ us folks that put up
with stayin’ ’way out here gotta make a livin’. Ye c’n take it or leave
it. Funny, though, a woman like you all alone forkin’ a hoss from
Glennin’ to Britton. If it’s any o’ my business--”
“It isn’t,” Mary broke in. “Where shall I put my horse?”
He shuffled out and to the corner of the house, where he pointed a
crooked finger toward one of the large stables, about which was a
tumble-down board corral.
“Put ’im in that corral,” he said. “That’s th’ hoss corral. Keep away
from t’other’n, though. It runs ’way back in th’ cottonwoods, to where
ye can’t see, an’ I got a bad bull in there. He killed a _cholo_ last
summer.”
“All right,” said Mary. “I’ll not go near him.”
She went to her horse, and, afraid to mount because she would display
her awkwardness and probably be forced to explain about the broken rib,
led the animal past the rancher toward the corral he had indicated.
He stood at the corner of the house and watched her until she had
taken down the bars and turned in the horse; but Mary had detected no
suspicion in his eyes as they roved appraisingly over the animal, as a
horseman’s eyes invariably will do. She had walked abreast the horse’s
shoulder to hide the Diamond H brand. He watched her while she took off
the saddle and bridle. But he had disappeared before she came from the
stable with the second allotted forkful of fragrant alfalfa hay.
Mary carried this forkful to the corner of the stable farthest from
the ranch house, as she had the first. Casting a quick glance over
her shoulder, she stepped past the head of her eagerly eating horse
and was hidden from the house by the stable. She whipped off her hat
and waved furiously to Shirttail Henry, hidden somewhere in that part
of the cottonwood grove inhabited by the man-killer bull. This bull,
Mary believed, was a myth; for she and Henry had approached the ranch
buildings so that this neck of the grove would screen them from the
inhabitants. Henry had slunk through the grove on reaching it, and she
had ridden by to come out on the road that passed through the ranch.
She had seen Henry’s broad, bewhiskered face peering out at her from a
portion of the grove not far from the stables where she had later found
hay for her horse. This meant that Henry had walked the length of the
grove parallel with her course along the road, and he had not looked as
if he had seen anything of the alleged destroyer.
When she began waving Shirttail Henry at once stepped from behind
the hole of a large cottonwood and returned the signal. Hastily she
scribbled a message on a piece of paper and, holding it up for her aide
to see, slipped it under a batten on the side of the stable. Henry
waved his understanding of the pantomime, and Mary hurried back in
sight of the ranch house and started walking toward it.
She had written:
This old rooster is a crook. He says there is a fierce bull in the
grove where you are. He lies. He wanted to keep me away from the
other corral and the buildings near it. I’ll keep him busy in the
house, while you look into all the buildings and see what you can
find out. That bull story convinces me that there’s something wrong.
Don’t be a blundering idiot, now, and make a splatchet of everything.
Five minutes after reading the note Shirttail Henry was clinging with
his knees to a rail which he had leaned against the adobe wall under
the ten-inch window of Dr. Shonto’s prison.
Mary Temple contrived to spend an hour and a half in the ranch house.
She fried fresh eggs for herself and made baking-powder biscuits and a
cup of tea. Gus Tanburt sat in a decrepit kitchen chair and talked with
her while she worked, questioning her about anything and everything
of which she knew nothing at all. But Mary’s was an inventive mind,
and she told him about the new schoolhouse at Glenning and spoke
feelingly of the last rites solemnized over the mortal remains of one
Dan Stebbins, shoemaker, as mythical as Tanburt’s bull. Didn’t he know
Dan? That was strange. But, then, of course he didn’t know a great deal
about Glenning. Maybe he knew the Morgan girls? No? Mabel had married
the young Baptist minister who had recently come from Ohio; and Ethel
Morgan was--well, perhaps the least said about Ethel the better. She
had bobbed her hair, though, and he could draw his own conclusions.
When the ordeal was over Mary laid a couple of dollars on a place in
the oilcloth-covered table where the oilcloth had not worn off, and
thanked the old profiteer in her sweetest manner. Tanburt did not know
that Mary’s sweetness was inevitably a danger signal, so, refreshed
with much fictitious news, he accompanied her to the door in a more
agreeable frame of mind and invited her to drop in again if she ever
rode through in the future. But he was too miserable to saddle her
horse for her, and bade her good-by on the porch.
Tucked under the same batten on the east side of the stable Mary read,
on the reverse side of her note:
Doctor is in that little dobe the othir side off the coral. Met me a
mile down the rode to the west of tanberts. I left this note before I
left.
“There,” murmured Mary, “is what you call American efficiency, which I
always suspected was pretty much hot air. He left the note before he
left. Henry! Henry! if all of our government officials were like you!”
* * * * *
The short winter day was drawing to its close. The sun was sinking
slowly behind the Coast Range, having dropped suddenly from under a
rack of clouds for its first smile of the day before seeking its bed in
the mystic west.
Then two horsemen galloped easily from a short pass through a chain of
half-hearted buttes that barely broke the monotony of the level desert
on the road from Tanburt Ranch to Britton. The first horse shied and
snorted, almost unseating its rider. The second, frightened by the
action of the first, reared on its hind legs and wheeled.
An apparition suddenly had confronted the little party. Mary Temple,
gaunt and severe of mien, had appeared uncannily in the middle of the
road, with a leveled Winchester at her shoulder.
“Up!” she commanded acidly, as the horses came to a dancing halt.
“Quick! Climb the ladder, both of you! Don’t make a mistake. I’ve
killed my man.”
Then the hammer clicked icily as she cocked it in the desert stillness.
That was the master stroke of the whole performance--that ominous
click that followed her unimpassioned command. It was psychological.
Leach and Morley thrust their hands above their heads and grinned
uncomfortably.
“Henry! Morley has a six-gun on his hip. Get it. Morley, let him get
it. I’m telling you the God’s truth when I say I’ll pull the trigger if
you move a hand. Damn you, anyway--I’d as soon take a crack at you as
break an egg!”
“Wh-why, Miss Temple!” gasped Smith Morley.
“Shocked, eh? Well, if you’d seen me when I ran the Silver Fox Dance
Hall in Alaska, ten or eleven years ago, you’d know who you’re dealing
with. But if you want to take a chance--Henry!”
“Yes’m--here I am.”
Henry quivered from behind the large greasewood bush that had concealed
him, and, grinning apologetically, stepped to the side of Morley’s
horse and removed a wooden-handled .45 from its holster.
He heaved a sigh of relief as he backed away.
“Now,” he said, “try to come any o’ yer capers on me, Smith and Omar,
an’ I’ll get me a club--”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Mary cut in crisply. “Why not blow
their heads off with their own gat?”
“Heh-heh-heh!” chuckled Henry.
“Hit the ground,” Mary commanded. “Keep your hands up and turn your
backs to me.”
Leach obeyed instantly, but a look of disdain had come upon Morley’s
features as, the first shock over, his courage began welling up again.
“You wouldn’t shoot--”
The remainder of his sentence was drowned by the roar of the
Winchester, and the prospector felt the wind of the bullet as it
crashed past his cheek. There followed the instant clacking of the
mechanism as Mary pumped another cartridge into the chamber. The horses
lunged and danced.
“You were saying, Mr. Morley?” Mary prompted sweetly.
But Morley was sliding from his plunging horse to the ground, where he
carried out to the letter the commands of the erstwhile mistress of the
Silver Fox.
“There’s some of the doctor’s stuff tied behind Leach’s saddle,” Mary
said to Henry. “Get it.”
Henry obeyed.
“Tie it behind my saddle,” was the next command.
Henry complied.
“Now get on Morley’s horse,” said Mary; and Henry mounted.
“Take the reins of the other horse and be ready to lead him.”
Henry swung Morley’s horse to the head of Leach’s and took the reins.
At the same time Mary was mounting her own animal, and she did it
quickly, despite the pain that the jerky movement gave her.
“All right,” she said to Henry. “Lead out at a gallop.”
Morley risked a glance over his shoulder. “You’re not going to leave
us ’way out here on the desert, Miss Temple!”
“That’s what _you_ say,” said Mary, and with her hat spanked the rump
of the horse that Henry was to lead to stir him into a gallop from the
jump.
A clatter of hoofs up the darkening desert road, and Leach and Morley
were alone with their thoughts.
Perhaps fifteen minutes later Mary slowed down to a walk, and, racked
with pain, sat gasping in her saddle.
“Ma’am,” said Shirttail Henry, whose horse had slowed with his mate,
“ye’re a outlandish uncommon woman. I never guessed ye was th’ kind to
ever run a dance hall like that Silver Fox place ye told about back
there.”
“No?” gulped Mary. “Well, I never did--but don’t you suppose I ever
read a story in my life? You talk too much. My rib hurts like fury.
Shut up!”