Range War
"That Harper's a good man," Pa said, sopping up the last of the gravy with a biscuit. "He may work for Myer, but that didn't keep him for firin' on some of Myer's skunks this afternoon." He wiped his mouth with a napkin and tossed it down by his plate. "Myer's guns had Dave an' Sandy strung up an' were about to tighten the noose, but Harper rode up an' chased 'em off. Let the boys go free, too, without a mark on 'em.
"Pity he works for Myer," he added, almost as an afterthought as I took his plate from the table.
Pa helped me with a few of the dishes before going into the sitting room to work on his record books. I followed soon after and picked up my embroidery.
Several minutes later we heard a tap at the front door, and Pa bellowed for whoever it was to come in.
Dalton, our foreman, stuck his head in the sitting room door.
"'Scuse me, Mr. Stearn, just though ya'd like t' know Jenkins just got back from the stream an' said that Harper was down there cuttin' wire agin."
"Well, don't just stand there, take some men an' pick him off!" Pa instructed as casually as if he'd been giving out the orders for the day. Dalton nodded and left.
"But, Pa, you just said a little bit ago he was a good man!" I cried.
"He may be, my dear," Pa said soothingly as to a child, "But he's on the wrong side of the fence."
"Pa! How can you be so, so cool about it?"
"This is war, child. You don't understand it."
I left the room sick at heart, feeling I understood more than he did, about life, at least. I ran to my room and changed into my riding clothes, which, luckily, were dark. Maybe, just maybe, I could get to the stream before the men. Dalton would have to ride out to the herd to get them from where they were guarding against sniper attacks.
My mare is a light buckskin, so I put a halter my father's gentle dark roan and loped bareback toward the stream. I slowed to a walk and stopped on the small rise above the stream, scanning the fence line. In the moonlight the strands of barbed wire were like strands of silver, and I could see where they were slack and where they disappeared into the dark water of the stream. I saw the dark shadow that must be Mr. Harper and the flash of the steel wire cutters he was so effectively using.
Our fence ran along the stream on the Myer bank for a long ways before crossing back to our side, and he seemed intent to cut it all. To be around, anyway, long enough to be shot like a sitting duck. I walked the horse down the hill and found out just what kind of a duck he was.
Twin flashes shone in the moonlight. One as the wire cutters fell to the ground and the other as they were replaced by a revolver.
"Don't shoot, please!" I called, and the barrel of the gun rose slightly. It looked as though he wouldn't shoot a woman, even if she was the enemy.
"Don't shoot, I've come to warn you," I called again when I was closer, but he didn't put the gun away.
"That's far enough, speak your piece." His deep, gravelly voice floated across the stream.
"There are some men coming to shoot you. I came to tell you so you could get away."
"Why?"
I was surprised at his blunt question. "They'll kill you! Won't you please go away?"
"Doncha mean 'run away'?" There was an edge of mockery in his voice.
"You'd be alive, and you can't fight them all!"
"If I run away I might as well be dead. But then I guess that's sumpthin' you couldn't understand." He holstered the gun, as if certain now I posed no threat, and stooped to pick up the wire cutters. "You better git on home now, 'fore they git here an' find ya."
I opened my mouth to ask him again to go, and then closed my mouth in defeat. I'd do just as well asking blood from a stone. The pounding of hooves caught my ear as I reined my horse around to leave. Mr. Harper had heard it, too, and the gun was in his hand again.
"He's too close; he'll see ya ride away." Mr. Harper spoke now in a harsh whisper. "Dismount an' turn yer horse loose, he'll git home alright, an' you come hide in this bunch of willers."
I hesitated, and the pale shape that was Mr. Harper's face swung toward me.
"Now!" he hissed in a savage whisper, and I hastened to comply.
I took off the halter and gave poor Roany a whack with my riding glove that surprised him into a loping run up the hill toward home. As he cleared the top I heard a shot as he met the approaching rider, and I flung myself head first into the thick clump of sapling willow trees on the stream's edge, flattening my face into my arm. I risked a peek and saw that Mr. Harper had disappeared, too.
The rider topped the ridge and rode down cautiously. When he got close to the spot where I had been bid to stop, he reined in and scanned the opposite side of the stream.
"Harper!" he called in a young, not unfriendly voice. "You down there, Harper?"
"I'm here. Whaddya want, Marrow." His tone was much less than friendly.
"Come now, Harper, we've never really been friends, but we ain't been enemies, neither…"
"Git t' the point."
"That's what I'm doin'. There'll be some men here in just a bit, an' they don't like you very much."
"So?"
"So I was thinkin', maybe this would be a good time t' ride out. Be a shame t' spoil a good gunman like you by shootin' him full o' holes."
Silence fell on both sides of the stream, then, "'Course, you could always put that fence back t'gether an' ride over onto this side of the stream. Ain't much difference which side ya stand on, fightin's the same, pay's close 'nough. Whaddya say?"
"I ride fer the brand, Marrow. An' I don't like t' see cattle goin' thirsty."
"Y'always did seem t' git yer heart mixed up in it some way or another."
"Not heart, just common decency."
More galloping horses were coming and quickly.
"Well, so long, Harper. Thought I'd gamble, anyway."
"You always were a poor gambler, Marrow. So long."
I lay in shocked stillness as the other riders pounded up and halted close to that man Marrow. How could two men who knew each other speak of death so carelessly? I wondered, then heard,
"You see him, Decker?" That was Dalton.
"I figure he's down in them bushes somewhere," Marrow answered. Apparently he was using a different name.
"Harper!" Dalton shouted.
"Better come out, Harper, we'll gitcha anyway you play it!" This was a new voice that I didn't know.
A six-shooter's retort was the only answer, taking off the man's hat. A barrage of lead opened, and I could see that even Marrow must be firing down on Mr. Harper. To me it looked like shooting fish in the proverbial rain barrel. But fish don't shoot back. Mr. Harper did, and with great accuracy.
I hid my eyes and covered my ears after the first man went down.
At last Dalton's voice rang over the shooting, calling his men back. They rode off and the shots died away. For a long time everything was silent. Then I heard someone in the stream. I looked up to see Mr. Harper wading toward our bank leading his horse. He slogged up on the bank and headed toward some long, low shapes on the ground. Stooping by the first one, he seemed to feel for a pulse, then placed a nearby hat over its face. He turned the other one over and did the same thing. Then he walked toward me, stumbling a little and walking as it he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
"You kin come out now." His voice was different, too, older somehow, and sadder. I stood up and looked at him. He was not short, but not over tall, either and looked gaunt in the moonlight. The metal of his gun, the bullets in his gun-belt, belt buckles, and hatband gleamed silver, and a stain on his shoulder gleamed darkly.
"You're wounded!" I cried.
He glanced at it. "I'll live. C'mon, I'll git you home."
I stared at him and he shifted impatiently. "They'll shoot you on sight," I offered at last.
"They won't see me. It's a long way to walk in the dark."
At last I let him persuade me, and I mounted his horse. The stirrups were too high for me, so he boosted me with his good arm. Then he swung up behind me and kicked the horse into a trot.
After a while I heard the breath start to whistle through his teeth and knew that his shoulder must be hurting him pretty badly.
"We can slow up," I offered, but he kept to the same pace without comment. "Why are you doing this?" I asked, tired of the silence.
"Why did you come warn me?" he countered.
"It's not fair to ambush a man."
"Ain't fair t' let the person who came t' warn ya walk back in the dark. 'Specially if it's a woman."
"My pa said you were a good man," I said almost to myself, "An' yet he sent those men to kill you."
"It's war, Miss Stearn."
"A rather silly one, over a piece of stream."
"Over more than that. Over whether one man's cattle live while another man's die. Whether one man's kid eats her meals while another man's kids go hungry. Whether one man makes it through the winter while the other man don't."
I was silent, looking at our problem in a whole different way. "Then Pa is wrong and Mr. Myer is in the right?"
"I didn't say that."
"Back at the stream…"
"I just chose the one I thought was less wrong. Best be quiet now."
I looked forward to see the lights of the house ahead of us. He stopped his horse and slid to the ground.
"Can ya make it from here?"
The moonlight fell across my shoulder onto his face, and he looked much younger than I had though. He was pale and his mouth was drawn with pain. He had started to shiver.
"Yes, but what about you?" I slid down with his hand on my elbow.
"I'll live." He grinned wryly, and looked pleasanter when he did.
"Thanks for the ride," I said, wishing there was something else I could say, but no words came.
He mounted with a hop and waited while I ran cautiously toward the back of the house, avoiding Shep who slept in the front. I slipped in through the kitchen door and crept up the stairs to my room which faced the stream.
Looking out my window in the dark I fancied I could still see him sitting where I'd left him, watching. I lit the lamp and looked again, and I know I saw the flash of the white socks of his horse as it jumped to a gallop and left with only the faint drumming of hooves.
I put out the light again and undressed in the dark. Sleep would not come as I lay in my pretty blue and white room with the feminine ruffles and furbelows. Thoughts raced over each other in a confusing, intertwined jumble.
Marrow.
Gunshots.
The bodies on the ground.
"Riding for the brand."
"A good man."
Barbed wire fences.
Thirsty cattle.
Hungry kids with hand-me-downs.
Mr. Harper's wound.
Mr. Harper's youth.
Mr. Harper's grin and calloused view of life.
War. What a confusing and –"silly?"— awful thing!