“All down in black and white. Signed by a judge. The land is his, Sheriff. River land . . .”
John Mallow watched the sheriff out of the office, stayed watching the door even when the man with the badge had gone. When he had pushed the book back into its place on the shelf he stood at the small window and watched Latigo Lansen walk his horse slowly along by the river, moving south. Shadows and hazing outlines warned that night had begun to claim the sky. He reckoned that the flat-waisted man on the horse would bed down somewhere for the night and ride to the ranch first thing in the morning. He’d want to see it in the early light. After ten years, morning was the best time.
Latigo laid a trail over the range and reined when he came in sight of the house. His throat tightened. The gelding stretched the rein to nibble at grass, sniffed air and smelled water. He was alone on the sloping land with the sun in the east and shadow reaching away from him. This was the time for crying out and he remained silent.
Smoke hadn’t risen from the chimney in eight years and that was a long time for a house to be without a fire. A house is not a home until logs are burning on the hearth and feet walking on board floors, until windows shine and the door stays open.
A windbreak of alder and larch rose behind the house and hid the bunkhouse. Five men used to sleep there. Out in front of the house stood the water butt and pump. Two hundred yards farther on the river ran sheathed with sunlight. From the house you could see clear down to the water, not a bush or a tree in the way.
Apache Indians had ridden across this land after buffalo or in the pursuit of war, with painted skins, wearing feathers and wielding lances and the air still echoed to the sound of their cries, the beat of drums and the music of thin reed pipes that made big medicine and was magic. Blood had been spilt and the last Apache lance to pierce the earth only ten yards from the front of the house still stood in a circle of whitened stones, the feathers shrivelled but the lance itself a lonely and barbaric reminder of wind and war on grassy plains and of history in the making.
Latigo looked away. It is only when there are people present to make a welcome of human sound that a man feels like crying out. When he is alone the urge is gone and and he should have known this.
The windows were dusty and the pine log door creaked when he let in the light. His shadow rushed ahead of him into the house. There were no ghosts to rear up at him and he was glad. Jeremiah Lansen had not even died in the house and the memories contained within the four walls were living thoughts.
The gelding came to the open door and kept an eye on him, watching his movements, listening for the sounds he made, being curious and puzzled when he was silent.
The doors and windows he opened wide. The bedding he burned in a smoky bonfire that sent a yellow-black coil into the sky. He inspected the corral and set fallen rails back in place. He rode north and found the stone marker with the name ‘LANSEN’ cut in granite. He turned east and rode until he found another, then south to where the hand of Lansen still clung to the earth. There were no fences anywhere to enclose the wide ranges of hard buffalo grass. Aspen clothed the river edges and willow slanted out over the water. It was all that he expected and it was intact. He could live with everything he saw and he was at a good age to start living.
The first thing to buy was a gun to buckle to his hip.
When the hooves of a single rider beat on the ground Latigo walked out into sunlight. The rider swept up the draw and reined within yards of the house. He was young, hard-faced and lean, like any one of the three who had ridden away from the sheriff’s office. He sat upright in the saddle while Latigo approached then leaned forward, elbow on the horn, and stared, eyes deepset under straight eyebrows but cold, his brown-skinned face clear and lighted. Latigo was sure he was one of the three, all had the same empty depth about the eyes, all seemed ready to squeeze the trigger, all had the look that came from never trusting, never being trusted.
“What can I do for you, stranger?”
He had placed the Winchester rifle in the gun rack inside the door, his first act of possession, so he was unarmed. The man on the horse wore a gun on each thigh. The rider stared, not taking his eyes from Latigo’s face. He straightened and clasped the saddle horn with both hands. “You the owner around here?” he asked; a question only, with no real interest in any kind of answer.
“That’s right.”
“Name of Lansen?”
“Something you want?”
“I got what I came for, Mister Lansen.”
Latigo stood forward and looked up so the man on the horse could see his face. “A good look at me. Is that what you came for?”
The rider did not answer. He stared longer then wheeled the horse. Latigo watched him ride down the draw and out of sight. He whistled and the gelding stretched a long neck out over the corral fence. He carried the saddle to the rail.
At the livery stable he said: “Can I borrow your buck-board? Got lots of stuff to hitch out.”
“Where you at, mister?”
“Lansen ranch.”
“Sure. Hitch up one of the work horses. You’ll find the wagon out back.”
In the general store Ed Harrison listened and nodded his head. “Can give you almost any kind of gun being used. You name it, mister. Almost sure to have it.”
“A Colt would suit.”
“Got a real nice pistol handy. Reckon one’s all you want.”
“Only takes one gun to kill a man.”
“Who’re you aiming to kill, son?”
“The fellow who’s aiming to kill me.”
“You’re sure somebody is?”
“It’ll turn out that way.”
Harrison laid the Colt six-gun on the glass-topped showcase and moved to the front of the store as the doorbell tinkled. Latigo selected a gunbelt and buckled the leather so the hang and feel were right. He was opening the chamber of the gun when the fair-haired woman came in and he turned to wait and to watch. There was no fury behind her eyes. She did not wear a hat and her yellow hair was plaited in a thick rope and bound up at the back. She wore a short fringed and beaded buckskin jacket and was still the finest looking woman he’d seen.
But she rode a high horse. Someday somebody would take her down a peg or two and when it happened dust would cloud the air inside the corral and there’d be noise and anger and she’d be hurt. He looked away before their eyes could meet.
“Father needs tobacco,” she said carelessly to Harrison.
Latigo picked up bullets and handled the six-gun. She walked to where he stood. “There’s something I’d like to know,” she said.
He touched his hat to her. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You saw the fight yesterday, Joe Erskine and Ben Nevin. . .”
“Yes, ma’am. I saw the fight.”
She remembered what he had said to her, how he had looked at her and the movement of his body as he swung himself easily up into the saddle. She had been troubled all day afterwards because she wasn’t sure that he was only what he looked like, a cowhand on a horse, something you see every day of the year; men who rode from town to town or spread to spread for sometimes less than thirty dollars a month and keep, putting down no roots, running with the cattle, growing lean and hard and lined and, with loneliness shining out of their eyes, being spoiled forever for anything else because the promise of men had been beaten out of them. So far he hadn’t been to the ranch to ask for work but if he was a cowhand he would come. They always did.
“What were they fighting about?”
“Didn’t ask, ma’am.”
“But you were there. You saw it.”
“Still