Chapter 2 Visit to the Harbingers

When it came time to say goodbye, all that good food provided by the Harbingers had put a few pounds on Bret. Not that he couldn't use them. Corrie, too, seemed plumper. Maverick laughed to watch her pile into a plate of sandwiches, or a slice of apple pie with cream. She could make short work of a thick piece of roast beef, too, along with some well-buttered rolls, and a large potato.

"The crisp spring air and all those miles you're putting on my feet," she said once, "give me an appetite."

Maverick concurred, she had an appetite. She never minded what she ate, putting it all away with a rare abandon for a young lady, especially one who had such a blooming figure to keep track of.

Holding him in a last embrace right there on the dock, in front of her pa and brothers—and assorted deck hands and curious passengers—she said, "You must come to visit us. I won't take no for an answer."

With a sheepish grin, Maverick parted from her. Clancy, more or less recovered by now, but still pale, grasped his hand. Bret turned the handshake into a brotherly hug, and then all four Harbingers boarded the St. Louis Belle for upriver, waving back at him until they went inside their cabins.

Clancy didn't leave the rail until last. Maverick could understand. It was hard, getting back into one's life, especially after such a tragedy. A girl and a crewman had been killed outright in the boiler explosion of the Henry Clay, thirty-six other passengers and four more of the crew had been in for a long bed stay, including Clancy. Only ten or fifteen had been like Bret, hale enough after a few days to take a walk through Westport, and then travel out again on another boat.

The itinerant riverboat gambler had been very lucky indeed. His luck had not turned when the Harbingers came to town, for that luck had brought him Corrie. And he would visit their ranch in southern Nebraska. He might even head up there later that spring, seeking a bit more R & R in the clasp of Corrie's arms.

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A couple of months passed rapidly. Then he received a telegram in Denver from the Harbingers. He had told them that Denver was a frequent stopping place for him, as the tables in the hotels and in some of the finer saloons were very lucrative. It was an invitation, sweetly worded as if written by Corrie herself. There was no note of the stern voice of Corrie's father, or of the scornful older brother's.

Clancy was mentioned in the telegram as 'progessing.'

Now early May, Maverick could come during spring roundup and see the ranch at work. A large cattle-raising farm, it was a big spread even for that never-ending grassland. Good grass, and lots of it. Saying he'd be delighted to accept their invitation, he sent his thanks by telegram, after which he penned a more conversational letter, addressing it to Charles Harbinger, Esquire.

In it he talked about Denver news, plus a few Eastern tidbits he'd heard about at the tables, knowing that letters from anywhere, about anywhere, were welcome on the distant prairies.

The men of the ranch met him at the Omaha levee—but Corrie was not with them. Was she ill? Her family didn't say anything about that being the case, so he stopped assuming. Clancy looked a world better. Always thin, he had filled out on good food and the brisk prairie air, spring in the uplands being cooler than near the river.

Maverick, living on his own, had not been so well looked after as his pilot friend. Smoking, late nights at the card tables, and other desultory habits had left him peaked, paler than Clancy had been in the days after the explosion. But clouds of white ash rising from the tables, poor food, and hours of sitting 'in the game' were to be forgotten for the next few weeks.

He felt fine, but knew he needed the rest of a ranch home for a change. Nothing but sunshine, Nebraska sunshine with the cool brightness in it, and tables heaped full of steaks and farm-grown potatoes—that's all he'd be seeing. Still, where was Corrie?

On one of their ranch horses, Maverick rode out of town with the three Harbinger men. Charlie hadn't said a word in his direction yet, just some gruff words to his father about "It's gettin' late," and Old Mr. C., as the boys called him, seemed locked up, too.

Clancy more than made up for them. He couldn't stop talking, though in a nervous manner. He slurred his words, as if something was preying or weighing on his mind. He never actually looked over at Bret, making the gambler apprehensive that not all of Clancy's recovery had been accomplished yet. Maybe he still hurt. He was still breathing harshly. In all this time, he hadn't gone back to his job on the boats.

Maybe, Maverick thought glumly, he never would, though the gambler himself had found his way back to the tables in the steam packets' saloons. Once or twice.

Some four or five miles from the ranch, Old Mr. C. pulled up. "We'll stop at our line shack to rest the horses. I can't wait for a drink of cold well-water."

For Maverick's hearing alone, Clancy leaned over and said, "Might even be somethin' stiffer hidden away behind the huge flour sack." He winked.

Bret caught his humor and said, "You must be in charge of stocking the various line shacks."

"I know what's in 'em."

"How's roundup going?" Bret asked. Despite his name, Maverick, he wasn't really interested in joining one. Too much dust flying up in his face and oh, those long hours in the saddle. He'd punched cows before, in fact he'd done a bit of everything, so he remembered. Chuckwagon food. Heavens, no!

"We're too darn busy for visitors right now!" young Charlie said, in a loud enough voice.

Maverick, tightening his grip on the reins, looked back at him.

"Big as last year's, I guess," said Clancy, much the milder of the two Harbinger brothers. "I wasn't there, just having got my pilot's license."

For just four men, it was a good picnic at the line shack table. Clancy threw a meal together while Maverick and the others smoked and did a bit of talking about roundup and 'other' things.

"That's what brandin' is, showing who's boss to a bunch of slow-witted calves," said Charlie, looking deeply at Maverick when he said this.

Maverick cattle were unbranded, drifting creatures, and like any human creature, hostile to the thought of hot metal on delicate areas. Maverick laughed, but uncertainly, at Charlie's bloodthirsty stories of branding those that "almost got away."

During the smoke after lunch, Old Mr. C. got down to some business weighing on his mind. Maverick had wondered if there was something the elder Charles was concerned about, and he wasn't wrong. There was, and there was plenty. Corrie hadn't come out to meet him in town because she was indeed not well.

"A cold?" asked Bret, innocently taking a puff of his slim, dark brown cigar.

"You might say a cold, yes," sneered Charlie. Charlie endured a punch in the arm by Clancy.

Cutting to the heart of the matter, Old Mr. C. said, "She's with child, boy."

Maverick gulped at the abruptness of the admission, a delicate enough one for a near-stranger's ears. He stared over the little cigar he was fingering at his lips, but said nothing right away.

"That's why we telegrammed you. We had to let you know."

"Why?" he asked, with guarded amazement.

"Why not?" asked Old Mr. C.

This wasn't getting them anywhere. Maverick decided to get them somewhere! "You think I had a hand in it?"

"Not quite a hand, Bret," said Clancy, covering his smiling lip at once, hiding it from his gruff pa.

"It's not so," said Bret, taking another puff. He stood up and walked away from the little male group at the table. "Corrie and I were together a lot. So you must think … well, you must think what you do." He stopped and turned around. "What did she say?"

"She said, after much hesitation, boy, that it was you."

"Mr. Charles, I—I don't know how she got that impression. It's a hard thing to make a mistake about."

"Then," said the always outraged Charlie, "you're hintin' that Corrie's not telling us the facts straight!"

"No, not exactly," said Bret, taking a puff of his cigar. "But you must see. A man knows when—of course, he knows when. How couldn't he?"

"No time for denials, boy," said their pa. "Time's come for marryin' the both o' you!"

"Marryin'?" Maverick gulped again and took another puff of his cigar. "That won't do."

"What won't do," barked the old man. "Ownin' up to your responsibilities like a man oughta?"

"I would, if there were any to own up to. Mr. Charles, Corrie's probably distraught over this. Maybe she's not using her head right now. There had to be some other man. Maybe he's gone now, left her and she's afraid."

"A lot of maybes, Maverick. Truth is—"

"Truth is," said Charlie, drawing out his sidearm and raising it slowly at Maverick, who had traveled unarmed on the steamer that brought him to Omaha. He had a gun and holster and cartridges in his satchel, but his bag lay on the ground outside near the saddles and picketed horses.

"There's no need for guns," said Clancy. "Charlie, he'll see what has to be done and do it. I know Bret. Didn't he stick by me all the time I was ill? Like a true friend. Indeed, he is."

Maverick looked over at Clancy rather dubiously, wondering at the hero worship in his voice, especially after what Corrie had told them all.

"I'm going back to town. Our visit's over," he said, hastening to the door under the eye of Charlie's .38 caliber pistol. A trifle small for such a large man. But deadly, nonetheless.

"Stop right there, Maverick."

Maverick glanced at the door again, pausing in his stride towards it.

"We'll go on now to the ranch," said Old Mr. C., his thick bulk beginning to rise from the straight wooden chair. "Go on outside, the three of you. Clancy, you come back and fix up this place a bit this week, hear? I saw the roof had some shingles missing. Must be owls nesting there, too."

Such nonchalance. About to change a man's life forever, and the talk's about shingles and barn owls!

"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Maverick, reaching out for the latch on the door. "You say a man's the father of someone's child, then dismiss him for owls and shingles!"

"Ranches run all the time, boy. Remember that. A piece of this place will be yours someday."

"I'd never turn down such a bounty, sir, in my right mind. But when I didn't earn it, how can I—?"

"Enough palaver!" shouted the old man, hastening the others out with his hand.

Outside, the horses were saddled again. Old Mr. C. had trouble with his cinch, so Clancy stepped over to help. Charlie took Maverick's carpetbag out of his hand and hooked it onto his own saddle pommel. Bret shook his head and climbed aboard his horse. Then before the others were seated in their saddles, he faced about in the opposite direction. The ranch wasn't that way. Town was.

"I told you all something in the shack," he said, looking squarely at the astonished group. "I'm going back to town. You can keep my things. I needed a new shaving razor anyway. The old was getting kind of dull. I can get a new gun and cartridges, too. I don't mind, but I won't go to the ranch and live there in some kind of wayward dream of Corrie's."

He spurred his horse on with a swift double kick to the ribs. "I'll leave this horse at the livery's," he called back. But forty yards later, he crumpled over. A shot had come from Charlie's .38, driving a round piece of lead into Bret's left side. How deeply it lay embedded there he wouldn't know until he reached a doctor's. He knew he had to keep going.

He was still headed towards town, with five or six miles of open grange before him and three angry men in pursuit. One of them used to be a friend. Perhaps still was.

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"You shouldn't have done that!" yelled Clancy at his grinning older brother, who was blowing on his smoking gun.

"I know, why waste a bullet on a polecat? Shoulda used two!" Charlie chuckled dryly to himself and holstered his gun. He started to go for his horse.

Clancy's cinch had yet to be tightened. Old Mr. C. still had trouble with his. That left Charlie to ride off immediately after their hasty houseguest, but in his fury, the mean-spirited young Harbinger jigged his horse around and around, not able to land his foot properly in the stirrup.

"Mad brute!" Charlie cursed. At last getting aboard, he lit out after Maverick, his soon to be brother-in-law. He knew he could catch him on Lightning. The gambler, on a slower horse named Ollie, was losing blood with every breath and without a road in front of him had only a vague sense of direction back to town.

"Charlie!" yelled the old man, "don't shoot him again! Don't want 'im dead, do we?"

Charlie didn't answer. His lumbering weight rocked back and forth in the saddle, not making his mount all that happy to be under him. The paint horse threw up its head a number of times, and tried pitching him off, giving the wounded Maverick some lead on his.

Maverick knew how to ride. Hurt, dazed, and half-conscious, he could ride that animal into town without mishap. Charlie almost went down in a gopher hole and cursed the gopher! His horse limped after that and he had to get down. By that time Clancy and their pa had ridden up and stopped to watch him inspect the horse's leg.

"Break it, did you?" asked Old Mr. C., not too happy with his elder boy just then. The old man's bushy white moustache twitched up and down in his fury.

"Now, pa, 'e ain't lame. Get on after 'im, will you?"

"I'm letting him get ahead of us," said Old Mr. C., rubbing his whiskery chin.

"You want 'im to get away, pa?" asked Clancy. "What about Corrie?"

"He'll be ours, no doubt, by nightfall. That town's boxier than an overflowin' chicken coop! No other boat out till mawnin'."

"But he may keep ridin'!" squealed Charlie, massaging his horse's leg with his two big hands.

"Said he'd leave the horse, didn't he? I believe it. He will. He might go to the Doc's, then we can pick him up. Marshal'll help us, I'm bettin', oncet we tell 'im what's what."

"He won't get far," said Charlie, squinting towards the west. The bright sun was in the far southern quarter at that time. Their ranch was in the southwest. "Not with my slug in 'im!'

"That wasn't called for," said Clancy, righteously indignant, his lean face purpling. "Shootin' him. He had a right to be surprised 'nd take off. I know I'd be."

"I hope you'd be too smart to get into this kind of mess," said their pa, gruffer now than ever. He strode off with his horse and mounted up again. The ride into town was uneventful after that.

They had Maverick cornered, and they knew it. Couldn't push a man too far. Not all at once. Might lose him for good. Give him a little head, build up his confidence, and he'd be easier to take later.