Chapter 7: The Ride Out
"My husband was a hard-rock miner," Abigail said over the breakfast table the
next morning in the hotel dinning room.
"He was killed setting a charge. After the funeral his fellow miners took up a
collection to tide me over. I decided to go back east, but when the stage
stopped here at Red Rock, I was offered the job of managing the hotel for the
owner, a Mr. Simms, who suffered from consumption and had to move to Glenwood
Springs to take the cure. When his health worsened, he sold the place to me, and
I've been here ever since -- about five years now."
She watched Green eat his eggs and bacon as she sipped her coffee. He didn't
scarf down his food like most men. He ate heartily but methodically. There
seemed always an air of calm calculation about him that she couldn't recall ever
having encountered in another person before and a distinct impression that he
was dangerous. He looked steadily at you when he talked and there was no
flinching in him. He was serious business. But despite the feeling of intense
concentration that he projected there were moments--when he was quiet and to
himself--that she sensed he wasn't really 'there', that his mind was far off,
that he wanted to be elsewhere. She couldn't define it consciously, but she felt
it.
Are you staying in Red Rock long?" she asked, as he poured himself a second cup
of coffee.
He looked at her thoughtfully, leaned back in his chair and began to roll a
cigarette.
"All depends. I wanta get me a homestead somewhere and raise cattle. Just
haven't found the right spot yet. But I'll know it when I see it."
"Maybe you'll find something around Red Rock. There's plenty of free land to the
east -- valleys full of grass and water."
"Well . . . I intend to ride out today and look around. Never can tell; might
just find what I'm after." He smiled, but his eyes were like ice.
* * *
As Green stepped out on the covered walkway of the hotel he was wearing a serape
and carrying his carbine in its scabbard, canteen and saddlebags and two colts
girded around his lean waist.
A storm was building in the west. Black clouds covered the horizon. Faint sounds
of thunder reached his ears. Lightning flashed in the distance. It wasn't a good
day to be packing so much iron on one's person, but he didn't have much choice.
He had business to take care of, and he didn't want to put it off for another
day.
As he approached the livery, he saw the liveryman finishing hitching a team of
horses to the manure wagon, which he had covered with a sheet of canvas. A
double-barreled shotgun rested on the seat.
"Nice day for a ride," the liveryman grinned, taking his curved pipe from his
mouth for a moment to spit on the ground.
"It may hold off for awhile," Green said. "There's a good cross breeze between
us and the storm. I'll be back later tonight."
"Good enough. Got him all shoed up for yuh. We'll settle up whenever. No hurry."
Green drew out a smoke while he waited for the liveryman to get his horse. Then
fixed his gear to the saddle and mounted up.
"He wasn't a bit shy about going in the stall. Must've been a white man's horse
before the Apaches got hold of him."
Green nodded, flipped the reins and cantered off down the street to the east.
As soon as he was far enough out to be unseen from town, he turned off the road
and moved up into hill country and circled around behind a boulder out of sight
and waited.
Soon the liveryman passed by on the wagon, the shotgun lying across his lap.
Green waited ten minutes until he was out of sight and followed.
Hours later, toward noon, the storm finally caught up to them. Rain began to
fall, and the wind picked up. Green pulled his hat down more snugly on his head.
The tight weave of the wool serape made it waterproof. Thick drops plummeted
onto the dry, desert floor making miniature craters; dry sage brush and grass
crackled from the sudden onrush of moisture. The air smelled of damp earth. A
lone magpie -- it long tail streaming out behind it and its white wing patches
flashing -- raced across the sky before the storm. Thunder grew loud and flashes
of lightning came closer.
As Green came to a rise he saw the liveryman pulling up in front of a log cabin,
and scurry down off the wagon onto the cabin's porch as a woman came out to
greet him.
Green sought shelter among some boulders where he could keep an eye out on the
cabin and waited, grateful that he didn't have to be out in the open as
lightning struck nearby with a loud report.
* * *
A few hours later the storm let up long enough for the liveryman to shovel off
the muck into a compost heap a few hundred feet back of the cabin. Green watched
as he headed the work wagon back toward town. The rain had turned the desert to
mud, but the wagon being empty proceeded easily. When the liveryman was out of
sight, Green mounted up and rode down to the cabin. The woman must have seen him
coming, for she stepped out onto the porch cradling a double-barreled shotgun.
She was attractive, well-shaped in her gray, flannel dress, with dark-brown hair
pulled back in a bun. The eyes that observed him were brown and intelligent.
"What can I do for you, mister?" she asked.
"Name's Green. John Green. Are you Susan Holbarth?"
She nodded. Her grip tightened around the stock of the shotgun.
"A man I met in Las Cruses said you were having trouble with a rancher who
wanted to drive you off your land."
Susan Holbarth didn't say anything. But her expression became wary. Her brown
eyes bore into him.
"And just who was this man you talked to?" she finally asked.
"A former hand of yours by the name of Ike Walters."
Her eyes didn't stray from his for an instant.
"Yes, Ike worked for me awhile back. What did he have to say?"
Green crossed his hands on the pommel and began flicking the ends of his reins
casually.
"Well . . . we were playing a few hands of poker -- he'd had a lot to drink --
and he began talking about how a man could make some quick, easy money if he had
a mind to. Now I've lived long enough to know there's no such thing as quick and
easy getting together with money as a rule, but being a person with some time on
his hands I thought I'd drop by just on the off chance he was telling it
straight."
"He's a damn fool for talking about it." She relaxed her posture. A shrewd look
replaced her former wariness. "But I'm probably a bigger fool for thinking he
was man enough for the job."
She seemed to mull something over and shrugged.
"What the hell; why don't you light down off your horse and come inside for some
coffee."
Green tossed his wet serape on a log bench by the door.
The furnishings of the cabin were mostly utilitarian. To the right was a
fireplace in front of which was a crudely made table and two chairs and two
boxes set on ends for chairs. The smell of stew cooking came from a Dutch oven
hanging in the fireplace over a bank of glowing embers. One quarter of the cabin
had been blanketed off to make a bedroom. A clay floor was covered with canvas.
In the corner by the fireplace was a makeshift cupboard of planks for storing
supplies.
She nodded for him to sit down. Holding on to the shotgun with one hand, she
placed a tin cup in front of him and filled it with coffee then filled one for
herself. Outside the rain began to fall softly again. She sat down in the other
chair across from him and cradled the shotgun across her lap.
She studied Green cautiously and sighed, brushing back a loose strand of hair
from her forehead. Her voice was tinged with bitterness as she spoke.
"Cordel Loomis owns all the land around here except for my place and about forty
other homesteads and small ranches tucked in this valley -- and he wants all of
them. As soon as someone gets title to their land he comes in at the point of a
pistol and forces the landowner to give him the title or get a bullet through
the heart. And he means business. A few have resisted, and they're all lying in
Sandhill Cemetery at Red Rock."
"What about you? You haven't sold out?"
"I'm a fighter. I'll never sell out to that arrogant bastard, but the rest are
like sheep. I've tried to organize them. Together we could resist Loomis, if
they weren't all a pack of cowards. Afraid to stand up for what's theirs . . .
but, much as I hate to say it, by myself I'm helpless. He's given me an
ultimatum and it's only a matter of time until he shows up again on my doorstep
demanding that I leave. I can't fight him alone . . . but . . ."
"But?" Green prompted.
Susan Holbarth lowered her eyelids, raising them slowly.
"If you cut off the head of the dragon the body dies too." Her brown eyes were
hard and cold, determined.
"In fairy tales some dragons have more than one head."
"That would be Patrick, his son," she answered. "But rumor has it that he
doesn't have his father's ambition. He just returned from the east with his
wife. So I don't know much about him, but I'll take my chances with him over his
father -- nobody could be a bigger bastard than he is."
Green crossed his legs and began making a cigarette.
"Ike mentioned a thousand dollars."
There was a long pause while he filled the paper with tobacco, rolled it and
licked it. When he was done he struck a match on the underside of the table and
calmly lit the cigarette, shook the match out and tossed it in the fireplace.
"When the jobs done," she replied.
Green chuckled softly.
"Well, now, I don't plan on hanging around after it's done."
"I can't give you that much money upfront."
Green was about to reply when the sound of horses sloshing through the mud could
be heard approaching.
"Wait here," she said, and carrying the shotgun moved to the door.
It was Cordel Loomis and half a dozen of his men. All of them were wearing
yellow slickers, their wide-brimmed hats wet, and slouched from the rain. Susan
recognized the only three Mexicans in the bunch as the ones who constituted
Loomis' personal bodyguards: Jorge Mendoza, Luis Amundo and the young pistolero
called Chili. They had a reputation as 'los malos, the evil ones', and Susan has
no desire to find out if they deserved their reputation.
Cordel was sitting a sleek, black stallion. His blue eyes took in the pinto tied
to a porch post; he glared at her. His long, white hair dripped water.
"You been thinking over my offer, Susan?" He wiped his hand across his face.
"Why, I don't remember any offer, Cordel. Unless you mean telling somebody to
get off her property is an 'offer'."
Cordel cast aside a snide grin at a couple of his men.
"That's the best offer you're gonna get, little lady. This is my land by rights,
by God! I ain't about to let you damn sodbusters march in here after all the
fightin', killin' and dyin' is done and take over what I spent forty years
building up!"
"You don't own the Earth, Loomis. Other people have a right to their fair share,
too."
"Bull crap! This land belongs to whoever can take it and hold it, and that, by
God, is me!"
Loomis took his hat off in exasperation and slapped it against his thigh causing
his horse to start. He cursed softly and ran his fingers vigorously through his
mane of white hair and settled the hat back on his head.
"I've been hearing that you're buying up homesteads that have received their
titles. That's a dangerous game you're playing, little lady. No way in hell you
want to get between me and what I want; if you do you can be damn sure you're
gonna get hurt -- bad. Now I'm gonna make one offer to you, and this is gonna be
it. If you were a man I'd have shot you by now and been done with it, but I
figure you being a woman I'll cut you some slack -- if you get the hell out'a
here by nightfall."
"And if I don't?"
Loomis chuckled.
"Then the same thing that happened to that fool husband of yours might happen to
you." He shrugged his shoulders and pouted as if to say, 'who knows?'
"Be a real waste, too," he continued, ". . . an attractive woman like yourself."
He glanced openly at her breasts.
"You bastard!" she cried and started to raise the barrel of the shotgun.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a calm voice said.
Startled, Susan glanced back over her shoulder. The man who called himself John
Green was standing in the doorway. His pistols were out and aimed at the young
Mexican, Chili, who had been reaching under his slicker for his pistol.
A look of surprise crossed the young Mexican's face; his hand moved up and away
from his pistol.
"Who the fuck are you?" Loomis demanded.
"He's my . . . new foreman," Susan answered falteringly.
Loomis stared at the stranger as if thinking things out.
"Bit late in the season to be taking on a new foreman, isn't it?"
"That's none of your concern," she answered.
Loomis sucked audibly on his teeth, his eyes never leaving the stranger and the
unwavering cocked pistols in his hands.
"Wha'cha name?" Loomis asked.
"John Green."
"Well, Mr. Green, you're job as foreman is gonna be short-lived cause Mrs.
Holbarth is packing up and moving out, and if you're smart you'll get on that
Indian pony and hightail it out'a here before you thoroughly piss me off. Cause
all I have to do is nod my head and -- boy howdy -- you're history."
"If that's the case, then," Green responded, "I wouldn't nod my head. I might
take you along for company and that greaser sittin' next to you."
"Cho! In my pants I fuckeen sheet," Chili cried out disdainfully, but he was
careful to keep his hand clear of his weapon.
"OK, have it your way, Susan," Loomis said hotly. "I've given you fair warning.
I'll be back, and you'd better be ready to sign over this miserable scrap of
nothing and get!"
Saying his piece, Loomis glared at Green one last time, jerked the stallion's
head around and spurred him into a gallop. His men followed in his wet wake,
soggy clumps of mud flying up from the hooves of their horses.
Green deftly rolled his pistols forward around his index fingers and flipped
them up into the palms of his hands so that the butts were facing forward as he
slid them neatly into his holsters.
"I'll give you two-fifty upfront," Susan said.
"Five hundred," Green replied.
"Done."
