It was galling to admit that a man like Henry Pelham had to be the one to come in and show them how wrong they had been, but Charlie was enough of a realist to accept facts without argument.

  Approaching the ranch buildings, he discovered that he was now glad the letter from the Rio Kid had prompted him to accept Pelham’s offer of a job in order to have an excuse for sticking around the Bar L for a few days. He resolved he’d keep his eyes open, by golly, and learn all he could about this haying business while he was watching out for the Rio Kid.

  Everywhere before him in the dusk of evening was concrete evidence of the extent of the rehabilitation of the old run-down Bar L ranch. There were new corrals and cutting pens, modern branding chutes and capacious barns. The adobe walls of the ranch house itself had merely been repaired, but there was a new frame bunkhouse behind it, and farther up the slope was another long narrow frame building which he guessed had been built to house the Mexican laborers hired to do the manual labor in the hay-fields which the regular cowboys regarded as beneath their dignity.

  Half a dozen spurred and gunned riders were squatting against the outer wall of the bunkhouse waiting for the supper bell to ring when Charlie rode up to the corral. He saw their watchful hostile gaze upon him, and though he didn’t recognize any of their hard faces he knew he had seen them all at one time or another in Chapparell where they were a close-mouthed crew, sticking close together and avoiding contact with other punchers.

  He gazed back at them coldly, making no sign of greeting. An old man hobbled out of one of the barns and approached him when he swung out of the saddle and started to loosen his girth. The old man was bald-headed and had wizened features. He dragged a club foot and wheezed with asthma. His voice was high-pitched and querulous:

  “Lookin’ fer someun, young feller?”

  Charlie shook his head stolidly. “I’m on the pay roll … beginnin’ tomorrow mornin’.”

  The old hostler squinted rheumy eyes at him, at his puncher’s garb and the significant fact that he carried no gun. “You don’t look none like the kinda rider the boss gen’ally hires.”

  Charlie said, “Don’t I?” He pulled his saddle and blanket off. “Where’ll I put my horse where I can catch him up later? I may take a little ride aroun’ tonight.”

  “Stick him in this pen over here.” The old man hobbled in front of him to unlatch a heavy hinged gate into a small corral where two other saddle horses munched new-cut hay in feed troughs. Charlie slipped the bridle off and slapped the roan on his sweaty flank, sent him trotting into the corral. “Where’ll I find the foreman?”

  “Up to thuh bunkhouse, I reckon.” The old man dragged his heavy foot back to the barn and Charlie turned up the slope to the bunkhouse.

  The row of squatting figures did not move as he approached. Complete silence held them, though Charlie had an uneasy feeling that he had been the subject of spirited discussion until he was close enough to hear what was being said. They were a hard-bitten bunch, with none of the joviality that generally characterizes the Western cowboy as he relaxes before supper after a hard day in the saddle. Charlie met only cold, impersonal stares and blank features as he walked up stolidly and stopped in front of them. He rubbed his blunt chin and asked mildly, “Which of you is the foreman?”

  The man on the end of the row was heavy-shouldered, with swarthy features and a hooked nose that had a westward slant to it. He, in common with two others, wore two guns, and he was chewing a straw between yellowed snag teeth. He tilted the straw upward and looked past the end of it up at Charlie thoughtfully, then grunted, “I’m him. What yuh want?”

  “Mr. Pelham,” said Charlie, carefully suppressing his rising anger, “said you’d fix me up with supper and a place to bunk.”

  “What for? You a friend of his?”

  “I’m workin’ here.”

  The foreman’s eyes traveled slowly down from the crown of Charlie’s hat to the toes of his boots. The third man on the foreman’s left snickered into the silence. Charlie turned his head and considered him gravely. He had a thin hatchet face and a great deal of very thin nose that came to such a sharp point it appeared to have been filed that way. He had shifty eyes and he kept blinking his lids as Charlie stared at him.

  “What,” asked Charlie gently, “is so damn’ funny?”

  “The idee of you workin’ here.” The hatchet-faced puncher yawned and started to get up. He was another of the three who carried two guns in crisscrossed belts. His hands went to the low holsters as he stood up.

  Charlie Barnes leaped forward with tigerish agility surprisingly at variance with his mild expression and solid build. He drove his right fist to the end of the man’s pointed jaw before he came fully erect. The back of the gunman’s head thumped solidly against the wall behind him. He slid back to the ground slowly and his eyeballs became glazed.

  Teetering on the balls of his feet, Charlie demanded, “Anybody else feel like laughin’?”

  Before the others could answer, the foreman ordered gruffly, “Lay off. If thuh boss hired him, that’s the boss’s business.” He jerked a thick thumb toward the doorway of the bunkhouse. “Take the bunk at the west end. Cookie’ll ring fer supper purty quick.”

  Charlie Barnes nodded stolidly. He squatted on his heels in front of the others lined up along the wall, and built himself a cigarette with steady fingers. Hatchet-face moaned and feebly essayed to sit up. He wiggled his jaw with uncertain fingers and mumbled, “Did a haws kick me?”

  The man at the end of the row was a smooth-faced youth with hot queasy eyes and a surly mouth. He laughed jeeringly. “Pull yore guns fust next time, Mart.”

  No one else laughed nor said anything. Charlie scratched a match and held the flame to his cigarette. When it was drawing well, he said, “I reckon maybe you-all mistook what I was hired for. I don’t claim to be a gun-hand, but it don’t look like Pelham needs any more of them. I’m gonna run the haycuttin’ machine.”

  “A danged farmhand,” the smooth-faced lad jeered. “He don’t belong bunkin’ with us, Pat,” to the foreman. “Whyn’t you send him up with the other hay-cutters?”

  The foreman’s reply was a surly grunt. The man next to him answered, “Pat ain’t takin’ no chances of sendin’ competition tuh sleep up near-abouts Tonita. He’s done give all us our awders tuh stay plumb away from her. You know that, Billy,” and the man next to the end from Billy, bearded and red-faced, gibed, “Pat’s biggest worry there is gonna be cuttin’ out the sheriff from town. He was here this afternoon, all dressed up in fancy duds, stakin’ out his claim.”

  The foreman, Pat, spat out his straw and drawled derisively, “I ain’t worryin’ none aboot Tonita an’ the sheriff. I’m takin’ her fer a ride in thuh hills tonight, an’ after she comes back she won’t be int’rested in the sheriff’s fancy duds no more.”

  All of the men laughed coarsely, except Mart, who was still tenderly rubbing his jaw and darting an occasional venomous glance toward Charlie.

  A yellow-skinned Chink came from the rear door of the adobe ranch house and lustily rang an iron cowbell to summon the hands to dinner.

  Charlie followed the others in morosely. There were dark undercurrents here that worried him no little. Tonita must be the new Mexican girl both Les Edwards and Henry Pelham had mentioned. A beautiful young girl was as dangerous around a bunch of gunmen like these as a spark in a keg of black powder. Add the weak-chinned possessor of a law-badge and mix well … only God could know what sort of an eruption would result.

  And all he wanted was a chance to remain on the ranch peacefully for a few days in the hope of intercepting the Rio Kid before he rode blithely from El Paso into a trap. But his plan to patrol the east boundary at night to head off the Kid looked like it might already have hit a snag. If the foreman was going to be riding with Tonita he wasn’t likely to look with favor upon the nocturnal prowling of a new hand—it would look too much like an attempt to spy on his love-making.

  For the first time in his life Charlie Barnes caught himself wishing he was not so much a man of peace, longing for the weight of a six-gun on his hip and the sure ability to throw lead as fast as any other man. He had a foreboding hunch his fists weren’t going to be enough on the Bar L.

  6

  The foreman stayed behind, talking to the Chinese cook, after the others finished dinner. It had been a good dinner, more and better grub than Charlie Barnes put on the table for himself and his hands, and he left the long pine table with a feeling of well-fed satisfaction.

  The soft coolness of an early night breeze caressed his face outside the ranch house. The others had strolled on ahead to the bunkhouse, and he hesitated outside the door, rolling a cigarette and glancing up at fleecy white clouds scudding in front of the moon.

  A feeling of lethargic contentment was hard to shake off. He found himself trying to put off thoughts of the very serious business that had brought him to the Bar L. Mart had been surly and glum at the supper table, but the others had acted as though he weren’t there. He decided they’d probably leave him alone in the future if he left them alone. That’s all he asked.

  The soft thrumming of a guitar drifted through the night from the Mexican quarters farther up the hillside. After a moment a young girl’s rich voice joined the guitar. She was singing Mi Probecita, and the plaintive haunting sweetness of the native folksong brought a queer choking into a lonely man’s throat when he listened to it through the darkness.

  Charlie wondered if it was Tonita singing, whether she was a nice girl; and if she wanted to go riding with Pat tonight. His thoughts were vagrant and all mixed-up. He hesitated to go on to the bunkhouse where the others had mentioned a stud poker game. He stayed there in the shadow of the ranch house, and without warning his gaze and his thoughts went toward the Triangle A in the far distance.

  There was acute pain in thinking of Peggy and Henry Pelham together. He knew Peggy had been dismayed and disappointed when he allowed Henry Pelham to order him away from the ranch. He had seen the look of gladness in her eyes there on the porch when he called Henry’s hand. He hated to recall how that look of gladness had given way to one of dreary despair when he agreed to take Pelham’s offered job. But he defended himself with the thought that it was best she shouldn’t understand the motive that had prompted him to accept the job. Only God knew how the Rio Kid’s return would come out. If it turned out badly Peggy would be better off if she never knew.

  The foreman came out of the ranch house carrying a tin basin of steaming hot water extended in front of him. He passed Charlie without seeing him, went on toward the bunkhouse to shave his swarthy face, Charlie supposed, in preparation for his date with Tonita.

  Charlie hesitated a moment longer, then angrily turned on his heel and strode up the slope behind the bunkhouse toward the quarters of the Mexican laborers. The girl was singing again, a different song now, one that Charlie did not recognize.

  A small fire of dry mesquite roots crackled in front of the Mexican quarters. Quiet figures with colorful serapes about their shoulders were grouped about the fire, and the girl stood erect in front of the dancing flames. The man who strummed a soft accompaniment on his guitar was withdrawn from the group, squatting on his heels in the shadow of the house.

  The girl was beautiful, and she was extremely young. Silhouetted against the firelight, her figure showed lithe and slender. She tilted her head to look at Charlie as he entered the circle of firelight, and her full, parted lips smiled at him with the unaffected coquettishness of an unawakened child while rich melody continued to pour from them.

  No one spoke until her song was ended and there were nods and grunts of approbation from the silent figures about the fire. She stepped back out of the firelight and it seemed that a magical spell was broken. A tall, grave-featured Mexican arose and nodded courteously to Charlie. In his native tongue, he said, “The Señor is welcome among us.”

  Charlie thanked him in the Mexican language, and said hesitantly, “I was attracted here by the music. The song was beautiful.”

  “Gracias, Señor.” There was a note of pride in the tall Mexican’s voice. “It was my Tonita who sang.” He added politely, “The Señor is a new vaquero, no?”

  “A new hand on the pay roll,” Charlie told him simply. “Hardly a vaquero. Not the Bar L kind.”

  The Mexican nodded his understanding and offered him a corn-husk cigarette wrapping and a sack of tobacco. Charlie squatted beside him and rolled a long cigarillo. One by one the other Mexicans about the fire arose and quietly faded away.

  “We are but lately come from Mexico to cut the hay,” his host explained to Charlie. “There are many things we do not understand here … some things we do not like.”

  “I’m to help you with the hay,” Charlie explained hastily. “Driving the cutting machine.”

  The girl, Tonita, appeared momentarily, passing through the outer circle of firelight toward the corrals. The Mexican by Charlie’s side stopped her with a sharp, “Tonita!”

  She turned, poised as though for flight, and Charlie had a fleeting impression of an unbroken colt whirling and planting its forefeet at the first feel of a rope about its neck. But she replied submissively, “Sí, Papa?”

  He asked sternly, “Where are you going in the night?”

  A placid brown-faced woman came from the shadows behind them. She spoke rapidly in a flat monotone that held terror in it. She told her husband that the foreman had ordered Tonita to ride with him, and she wrung her work-roughened hands unhappily while she spoke.

  “Por Dios,” muttered Tonita’s father. “This I do not like.” He turned to Charlie and murmured, “You will excuse me, Señor,” then got up to grasp Tonita’s arm and lead her away from the fire out of earshot.

  Charlie squatted by the fire and morosely sucked on his cigarette while the murmur of voices from father and daughter came to him. He felt acutely ill at ease because he, too, was an American like Pat who had ordered the Mexican girl to ride with him.

  A burst of ribald merriment drifted up the hillside from the riders’ bunkhouse. That would be the others, ribbing the foreman while he shaved for his date with the girl.

  Tonita’s father came back alone with a measured stride. His features were set in grim tight lines but he did not speak of what troubled him.

  He began to talk, instead, of the haying work ahead, with many gesticulations of his sinewy hands and flashing of his white teeth. Yet, even while he spoke Charlie knew his ears were open for sounds from the corral, and once while he paused after a sentence a twinge of pain crossed his face when the hoof-beats of two horses trotting away from the ranch came to them.

  It was not more than ten minutes after that when a rider galloped up the road from Chapparell and came directly to the Mexican quarters without pausing at the ranch or bunkhouse. It was Les Edwards, his face flushed with drink and his eyes bloodshot. He gave Charlie Barnes no sign of recognition as he demanded, “Where’s Tonita? I told her I’d be back to see her tonight?”

  The Mexican beside Charlie arose courteously. “Sí, Señor Sheriff, but she did not know …”

  He was speaking Mexican and Edwards interrupted him impatiently, “I can’t understand that lingo. Talk English.”

  “Sí, Señor. I weel try.” The Mexican nodded submissively. “Tonita, she ees … I don’ know for how you say …”

  “Tonita,” said Charlie roughly, “has gone for a ride with the foreman. You got here about ten minutes late, Les.”

  Les Edwards gave a startled exclamation as he looked directly at Charlie for the first time and recognized him. “What are you doing here?” he demanded. “You had a hand in this, Barnes.”

  Charlie laughed sardonically. “A hand in what? Getting Tonita away from your filthy hands? Maybe I would have, except I don’t figure she’s any better off with Pat.”

  Les Edwards cursed luridly. In terse sentences he told them what he would do to Pat for trying to steal his girl. Then he asked thickly, “Which way’d they go?”

  “That way.” Charlie pointed in the direction the two trotting horses had taken. Edwards reined his horse away from the fire and spurred in the direction Charlie had pointed.

  The girl’s father gazed after him, shaking his head sadly. “This is not good, Señor. It is evil for Tonita. I feel it here.” He put his hand over his heart.

  “It ain’t good,” he agreed. “Excep’ maybe he and Pat’ll kill each other an’ that sure won’t be no loss.” He stood up and placed his hand on the Mexican’s shoulder. “Reckon I might mosey along too, to sorta keep an eye on things. If anything happens I’ll try my best to see Tonita gets home safe.”

  The father’s eyes thanked him wordlessly. He stood there like a statue while Charlie strode away, but he hadn’t gone more than ten paces when he heard the Mexican issuing crisp orders to someone to saddle up his burro at once.

  Charlie continued on to the corral thoughtfully. The Bar L range was sure due to be overcrowded tonight. He hoped to God the Rio Kid wouldn’t pop up unexpectedly to complicate matters further. Les Edwards was a crazy fool to go looking for trouble with Pat while he was half drunk. The foreman was a gun-killer if Charlie had ever seen one. Les wouldn’t be any match for him dead sober.

  And that reminded Charlie that he was totally unarmed. He’d be sticking his neck into something if he rode out there without even a saddle-gun to protect himself with.

  He hesitated with his hand on the gate where his roan was penned, then turned back toward the bunkhouse.

  In the yellow light of a kerosene lantern hung from a rafter the five Bar L hands were sitting around an improvised poker table when Charlie entered the door. Billy glanced up at him with a sneer as he threw a hand of cards down. “Here’s the farmer wantin’ to join us, I reckon.”

  “Nope,” Charlie disclaimed. “I’m only wantin’ to borrow a shootin’ iron. You, Mart.” He fixed his cold gaze on the hatchet-faced man whom he had knocked down outside the bunkhouse. “You’ve got a couple you don’t go for very fast. How about loanin’ me one of ’em?”