15 Western Short Stories — page 50: what you’re looking at

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50 but it took the tooth. He went out onto the porch and spat blood for a time and came back and said: “You got a place where a man could nap for a couple hours? I’m beat-up from all the walkin’.” “Why, sure. Got a hay mattress out in the woodshed for stray hands.” “Fine. ... You also got a few forty- five shells you could sell me?” Smathers hesitated and looked at Larribee shrewdiy. “You don’t feel partial to that selfish ornery Under- wood?” “T wouldn't exactly say I love him like a son.” Smathers grinned, went over to a shelf and came back with a handful of .45 cartridges. “Much obliged.” Larribee tossed an- other silver dollar onto the table. He put five cartridges into his six-gun and gently lowered the point of the hammer into the empty sixth hole, be- cause such six-guns are only five- guns, actually. The other four he put into the forward loops of the belt. “Just in case a sidewinder tries to bite my ear while I’m asleep.” The woodshed lean-to was along- side the rear of the house. Larribee spread his blankets on the hay and remembered the sandwiches she'd giv- en him. He took them out of a saddle- bag and ate them. Tasty, despite the sore gap in his crockery. He stretched out and sate thought of Millie and of love, the emotional jail which is walled-in by delusions. He’d been a tophand two years for her rancher father, with a sort of understanding he’d be promot- ed to foreman if he married Millite. But Millie had gone to college in the Kast and the banker’s son had gone to one nearby—-and Millie had come _ to her senses in time. Larribee dozed off, thinking of pa- tience and the face of things. Pres- ently Millie became a wraith pushed into the background by another fe- male, a Miss Underwood. BOUT SIX o'clock Smathers came out and awakened him. Larribee went in and partook lightly of a sup- per consisting of tough beef. soured boiled beans, fried potatoes soggy with grease, and biscuits hard enough WESTERN SHORT STORIES to knock a bull unconscious from ten paces. For this he offered no pay- ment. A sullen and shifty-eyed cow- hand named Jacoby shared this re- past. Evidently he’d been working out there in the brownness somewhere this afternoon. Larribee felt sleepy still. He said: “Much obliged for the chuck. I need some more shuteye.” “Good idea,” said Smathers, eyeing him thoughtfully. We start the job along about sunup.” Larribee quite literally hit the hay again. He wondered about the mys- terious job. For it he had neither the face of things nor the facts. For a horse, however, the kingdom of any- thing reasonable}. ie It was perhaps half an hour before Sunrise that Larribee awakened. Heavy voice, toned down, were talk-. ing across the wall in the combination kitchen and dining-room. Hank Smathers was saying: ‘Pete got back from his—hrrumph !—busi- ness trip about an hour ago. Here's your money. . You sure your survey- in’ papers look all legal?” “They don’t only Jook legal—they are legal,’ a primmer voice snapped. “I’m the county surveyor—remember? If I say a legal resurvey proves that well and that lake are on your prop- erty, then it’s a fact. The sheriff couldn’t prove any different, even if the drunken idiot wanted to try.” There was a significant pause and the voice added: “You and your brother kindly remember I’m the one who’s getting you that water. One third of the profits are mine for the next twenty years—and those profits should be big.” A Larribee ear was against a crack and he was making gently disarming Snoring sounds through this exchange of slightly mistrustful reminders. “Since Underwood hit that well three and a half years ago,” the sur- veyor continued, “he’s made a hun- dred thousand bucks net off his fat cattle—while other ranchers in this Section were losing money or going broke. Water weighs heavy as gold.” Hank Smathers coughed. “That’s what Pete an’ I figured when we bought this spread from those no-ac- COMIC OO“KS CO