"Buck Surratt."
Sam Torveen bent forward. "What was the idea of that play against Bill Head?"
Surratt said, gently: "Just to freeze things up long enough for me to get out of town."
"Supposin' the play hadn't worked?"
"It worked."
"Supposin' it hadn't?" insisted Torveen.
"I never figure more than one step ahead at a time," murmured Surratt.
"The hell you don't," countered Torveen. "You're half a mile ahead of yourself, every foot of the way. I been laughin' to myself ever since—the way you framed that." His grin was hard and cheerful. "You're trapped in town but you walk up to Bill Head, give him hell, and ride off before he can get unsnarled from his surprise. If he was a man quick on the recoil you couldn't of made that play stick, friend Buck. But you pegged him as bein' slow. I take off my hat to you."
Surratt's mind reviewed the scene in Morgantown methodically. There was a need in him for information, as there always was. "Who's Bill Head?"
"He runs the Crow Track for his old man, who's a cripple. It's a big jag of land, north of here, up in the hills."
"There was a dark, heavy fellow standing beside him."
"Dutch Kersom, another old-timer with plenty of cattle. I already named you Ab Cameron. The fourth fellow, the one with the bony face, was Hank Peyrolles. They'll account for eighty per cent of the beef in this section."
"The sheriff's not a proud man," reflected Surratt, "and the marshal just does what he's told."
Torveen chuckled broadly. "You're figgerin' again." But his eyes were curious. "Why did you ride into Morgantown, instead of goin' back to the desert? You must of known that shot would get you in trouble."
Surratt looked at Torveen steadily. Torveen shook his head and made a dry observation. "Pm not sayin' you did the shootin', Surratt. I meant that you're a stranger and you're pulled into it."
"Where would I run?"
Torveen remarked, very quietly: "So you're here, for reasons of your own. The pay is thirty a month."
"If I stay."
Torveen had a poker expression on his roan cheeks. "You came for a reason. It still holds good, doesn't it?"
"Yes," said Surratt. But his thoughts were on Nick Perrigo and the pallid face in the window, and his mind balanced evenly, with no decision. He could not resolve the puzzle. The reflection of it crept faintly into the studying soberness of his cheeks.
Slack in his chair, Torveen watched this out of his jade eyes. "Your head," he murmured, "never stops working. You got this ranch sized up and there's somethin' about it you don't cotton to."
"That's right."
Torveen shifted his body. The smile left him, the corners of his mouth stiffened. Inscrutably patient, Surratt searched the sandy cheeks of this Torveen, seeking some solid bottom behind the surface recklessness, beyond the skeptical glint of deviltry. He could not help it. All the hard training of his years had disciplined him to silence, to patience, to a perpetual vigilance against the trickeries of men. Faintly, he saw something now. Torveen's cheeks relaxed and a strain showed itself and his tone became ragged. He said: "If you stay, you'll find out for yourself. I need help, friend Buck, but I'll tell you no more—and I'm not askin' you to stay."
A steel triangle on the porch began to beat harsh sound across the day. It was noon, it was dinnertime. Boots scraped the porch boards and there was a rider coming in from the meadow. Torveen said, "Let's eat," and rose and led the way to the porch. He ducked through a door of the ell, into a dining room. Coming in, Surratt found three men already at the table and an enormous Chinaman standing against the wall. Then a fourth man entered and took his place, staring at Surratt with one brief, curious glance. Surratt sat down, silently reversing his capsized plate. Torveen said to the crew in his casual touch-and-go voice: "The name of the new member is Buck Surratt. Wang, if you don't quit puttin' so damn many eggshells in the coffee I'm going to throw a plate at you."
The Chinaman didn't stir and didn't show a change of expression. Torveen reared his head, obviously irritated. "I meant that," he grunted. But he covered the irritation instantly, nodding his head at the individuals in the crew as he named them for Surratt. "You know Perrigo, the gentle soul. The kid there is Ferd Bowie. Good-lookin' gander near you uses a title called Chunk Osbrook. It may be his real name, I don't know. Last man there answers to Ed."
They looked briefly at him without acknowledgment. For his part, Surratt went imperturbably on with his eating. But his mind registered them with a camera clarity and their faces told him things they hadn't intended to tell. This Ed was an easy-going misfit in a crowd that had a jarring, explosive note. Perrigo sat stirring his coffee with a bitter and unpleasant concentration on his dry, drawn features. The kid—Ferd Bowie—was bony and peaked. He still had an adolescent down on his cheeks, but there was a sallow savagery all about his look that told Buck Surratt of wickedness too early learned. Chunk Osbrook lifted a pair of ink-black eyes and seemed to measure Surratt for weight and reach. He was blunt and solid and proud of his strength, and Surratt understood then he would never be satisfied until he had demonstrated it. Buck Surratt suddenly remembered another man in his past who had been like that.
They ate out their hunger and left the room. More leisurely, Surratt listened to their idle palavering on the porch. When he was through he went out there and packed his pipe and glanced through the soft bright heat of the meadow, not noticing them. The talk had stopped with his appearance and the silence was a morose, alien thing. Torveen stood in the doorway of the main house, indifferent and minutely smiling, as though he were removed from this animosity and impartial to it. But Surratt detected the irony of that man's glance.
He tried another match on his pipe and clenched it between his teeth. Stepping off the porch he walked over to his pony and unlashed the blanket roll. The stillness behind him was hard and continuing, and he had no need to turn to see how closely they were watching him. He strolled back to the ell and went along it to the end door. Inside, he saw a dozen double-decked bunks surrounding a stove md a table and four home-made chairs. Heat and stale smoke and the horsy smell of men's clothes lay thick through the room. He dropped his roll on an empty bunk and walked back to the porch.
Nick Perrigo sat on the porch edge, his back bent far forward, his hands on his knees. He glowered at the dust; the nerve-ridden thinness of his face sharpened. He said idly: "Chunk, you left your tobacco in the bunkroom."
Chunk Osbrook rose with a jerk, as though released from enforced waiting. His spurs dragged along the porch. Not looking that way, Surratt heard him strike the flat of his hand against the building wall and go into the bunkroom.
There was a quality of expectancy flowing out from this crew that fanned across Surratt's cheeks; it was an intangible thing other men might not have felt But for him, trained in the shadings of trouble, it registered on receptive senses and ticked a coolness along his nerves. In the bunkroom something fell to the floor. He turned then and stared at these men. They were looking away from him, motionless against the sunlight—and waiting. There was, he thought regretfully, nothing new in this pattern; it was the pattern of his life and all the running in the world would not help him. He walked back to the bunkroom door and went in.
It was his blanket roll on the floor, thrown there by Chunk Osbrook. The man stood backed up against the table, his feet braced apart. A slow, deep breathing lifted and lowered the heavy arch of his chest; and his eyes were round and bright and greedy. He said:
"Your junk was in my way."
Surratt walked around the table. The space was narrow and he had to pull his shoulders aside to avoid brushing Osbrook. He went on around. Osbrook made a swift wheel and sudden doubt shaded the glitter of his desire. The table lay between them. Surratt put his hands at the edge of the table, gripping it. His thoughts were dismal then, darkened by the going of a hope. The ways of a man's life always caught up with him. Somewhere was peace but not for him; and this chore had to be done. There