A Breed of Men Read online

  Link said: “Is that coffee I smell?” He went to the stove and poured two cups of coffee. He and Win stood, drinking it black and unsweetened.

  “Is he alive?”

  Win and Link looked at the man.

  “Sure,” said Win, “I don’t never kill a man un’ess I mean it. You know that.”

  Chapter Four

  George was conscious of a sound.

  It was familiar and yet he could not place it. He lay thinking about it, aware that he was a mass of pain. He seemed to float on an ocean of it.

  Gradually, it came to him that he was listening to the chamber of a revolver being turned. He ventured to open his eyes. The light hurt them, seering through merciless to the rear of his eyeballs and the brain beyond. He shut them tight and heard somebody groan. He reckoned it was him.

  He heard a voice say: “He’s comin’ around.”

  He floated away for some time on the pain again and then abruptly he was totally aware of himself and the world around him.

  He was lying on the floor of a cabin and the light that hurt his eyes was streaming in through the open doorway.

  He turned his head and saw a pair of boots. They were good boots with silver spurs. He lifted his eyes and saw a human face.

  It was a good face.

  Broad-planed, cleft chin, an easy mouth, above them a classically straight nose and mild dark eyes. The hair above was a rich brown.

  He looked around him and thought that he was alone with this man.

  The man said: “Decided to live?”

  “I reckon,” said George.

  “What’s your name?”

  “George Storm.”

  “Any kin to Will Storm?”

  “Son.” The man nodded. “Who’re you?”

  “Bill Sutch.” George stared hard. “Know me?”

  “Who don’t?”

  The man smiled. He looked pleased.

  “I hear you tried to beat Win Gort’s rope. Better men than you have failed.”

  “What happens now?”

  “I haven’t decided. I’ll think on it. First off, as it looks like you’ll live, we’ll have one of the women patch you up.”

  He walked to the door and shouted.

  George lay there, thinking. Bill Sutch—the man had made himself a legend inside a couple of years. Nobody knew where he had come from. But they all knew where he was going—toward a noose. Men who knew him spoke of him as a gently-mannered, soft-spoken man. There was little hard evidence that he had ever killed a man, yet the men he rode with had blood to their elbows. All agreed that he was intelligent, fearless and without peer in the various trades of thieving. Mart Storm, George’s uncle, who had ridden the owl-hoot in his time, maintained that men like Sutch did not steal for gain but because they were inveterate enemies of society. The law itself was a challenge to their desire for untrammeled freedom.

  At that moment, George was thinking of the callousness of the man—waiting to see if he, George, had a chance of living before he had his hurts attended to. Through the dark hours of the night it didn’t matter one way or the other to Sutch if George lived or died. Legend had it that he was a man who touched hard liquor seldom, but that he had a passion for women and horses. Occasionally, one heard of tales of his generosity and there even some stories of his having robbed the rich to give to the poor. Some such tales always clung to bad-men.

  Sutch turned from the door now. He was smiling. He sat down at the table and started to pare his nails with a knife.

  A woman entered and stood looking at George. She wore the bright wide skirt of a Mexican, a dirty blouse. She looked all Indian from south of the Border, but George couldn’t be sure.

  She came and knelt by him and said softly and with great tenderness: ”Pobrecito.” The traditional Mexican gesture of pity. She turned her head toward Sutch and said in Spanish: “What animal did this to him?”

  “Gort.”

  She nodded.

  “I would expect as much.” Of George, she asked: “Can you get on your feet?”

  George nodded, her strong hands gripped him and together they put him on his feet.

  “Where do you think you’re goin’?” Sutch asked.

  “I shall take him to my home,” she said.

  Sutch said: “All right. But he doesn’t leave here.”

  They made their way out of the cabin, the woman’s arm around George. She was short and George towered over her, but she was strong and used to carrying heavy burdens. She smelled of animal. He thought that she was probably not yet twenty years of age. She walked sturdily on bare feet, her toes spreading and gripping the ground.

  Her home it turned out was a primitive wickiup of branches and dried mud, shaped something like a beehive. There was a fire in front of it and on it was an iron kettle from which savory smells came. It was a pleasant shady spot here.

  “Go into the house and sleep,” she said.

  In his almost cow-pen Spanish, George said: “It is good out here under the trees. I shall stay here.”

  She nodded and fetched a hide robe from the hut, placing it on the ground for him. She seemed somehow pleased that she had him to care for. George lay down. He was more than ready to, for the world was starting to turn around him drunkenly. She came and knelt by him again, pulling aside the rags of his shirt that had dried into the torn flesh of his chest and belly. She inspected each of his hurts stonily and without embarrassment. Then she told him to rest. She was going into the hills to find the herbs she wanted.

  That was the last thing George heard. He drifted off into a deep sleep.

  He awoke reluctantly to find the woman bent over a small kettle on the fire, stirring something within it. A pungent smell teased his nostrils. She turned to see him awake and muttered something in Spanish. He lay there enjoying the cool under the trees. The sun was high above them now and he knew that he must have slept for several hours. He found that he was weak and that he had no inclination to get on his feet. His only comfort that he was lucky to be alive after the dragging he’d experienced.

  After a while, the woman brought the kettle from the fire held with two sticks. She laid it steaming at his side. Now with a rag dipped in the liquid in the pot, she started to clean his injuries. There followed an ordeal through which he would not like to go through often. His mauled and torn flesh was agonized by the application of the hot brew. If the woman felt sympathy for him now, she gave no sign. Stoically, she applied her medicine, ignoring his indrawn breath, the arching of his back, the fact that the sweat poured from him. Finally, when she was satisfied that the wounds were clean, she took the stewed leaves from the kettle and applied them to the wounds. She bound these in place with lengths of rag which she brought from her jacal. Exhausted, he lay back and thanked her. She merely grunted and squatted there beside him, her eyes on his face. George found that the application she had made had soothed his pains in an extraordinary way. Although he was still in acute discomfort, the sharp edge of his pain had been removed. He gazed at her in a sort of wonder.

  Lying there, he had the opportunity of taking a good look at the place in which he found himself. Near the Indian girl’s jacal, he was tucked away in a corner of the camp. Few came near him and from time to time he could see men and a few women moving about at a distance. The women looked to him like Indians or Mexicans. They carried their pitchers to the creek that flowed through the camp and returned to their cabins with them either on their heads or their shoulders. Now and then a horseman would ride slowly into camp and dismount wearily at the door of a cabin. In front of one building, he could see a group of men sitting in a tight circle on the ground as if they were engaged in a game of cards. It was a peaceful scene. Here and there a dog scratched, a goat wandered nibbling at the vegetation. Smoke drifted from the cook-fires. Few sounds but those of distant voices reached him. Occasionally there came the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil.

  He could not help but wonder to himself of the position that Bi
ll Sutch held here. Was this the headquarters of a band of outlaws as it seemed? Did Sutch reign supreme? Were the stolen cows driven to range near here?

  He also wondered if Harrison had missed him by now and thought that he must have done. If that was so, had Harrison informed George’s father or had he himself followed along his trail looking for him? Harrison had spent years with the Indians before he settled down with Manuela to raise cows and kids, as he said. He would find no difficulty in tracing George to this spot. If he had sent a rider to Will with the news of George’s absence, then Will would raise every man he could to scour the hills for him. George would dearly have loved to be a long way from his present location, but if the Storms came riding in here, blood would be spilled and George didn’t much like the idea of Storm blood being spilled for him.

  He wondered, too, what Sutch had in store for him. One thing he was pretty certain of and that was that now he was here and alive, Sutch would find some use for him. Several different explanations of Sutch’s decision to keep him here and let the Indian girl look out for him came to him, and he didn’t like any of them.

  He reckoned he wasn’t far wrong when he concluded that from the moment Win Gort had packed him into the hills atop that horse, his life hadn’t been worth a light.

  The answer to that was: he had to get away.

  Weak as he was, that was easier said than done.

  He inspected the girl whose unwavering gaze was still on him.

  Would he find any help there? Could he expect any more from her than the tending of his hurts?

  He spoke—

  “What do they call you?”

  She was lost in thought and seemed startled by the sound of his voice.

  “Serafina,” she told him.

  “Whose girl are you?”

  She gave a half-shrug.

  “Nobody’s girl.”

  He knew that wouldn’t be strictly true with her living among these men as she did. She was everybody’s girl.

  “Are they good to you?”

  She shrugged again, her face impassive. He could not make out whether she was stupid or uncommunicative.

  “To what people do you belong?”

  “I am Mexican.”

  That was a lie.

  “What do these men plan to do with me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That could be the truth.

  He thought—if he was to get away from here, he must build up his strength. First off, he must eat and sleep all he could and pray his hurts wouldn’t go foul on him. He knew his torn flesh could kill him yet. Maybe Serafina’s Indian herbs would prevent that. And maybe they wouldn’t.

  He closed his eyes.

  He felt the girl’s hand on him and opened them. She was looking past him toward the cabins. He turned and saw Bill Sutch and two other men walking toward him. They were Win Gort and the blacksmith. Bill Sutch was smiling. Serafina eyed him with distrust. She crouched over George like a she-wolf over its young.

  Sutch halted and looked down at George.

  “How you feelin’?” he asked in that gentle voice of his.

  “Pretty good,” George replied. “Thanks to Serafina here, I reckon I’ll live.”

  Sutch nodded, his smile fixed on his handsome face.

  “That could be debated,” he said. George didn’t like the sound of that too much. Sutch said to the girl: “Serafina, we’re going to take a loan of this boy for a short while.”

  Alarm darted into the girl’s eyes and George didn’t miss it. She started to her feet.

  “No,” she said, “you don’t take him.”

  “Serafina,” Sutch said quietly. “You be still.”

  “No,” she replied, “I will not be still. I have seen what you do. I make this man well. You gave him to me to make well.”

  Sutch said: “You be still, girl, or I kick your teeth in.”

  Win Gort giggled. His Adam’s apple worked alarmingly. He looked like he hoped the girl wouldn’t be still.

  She cried: “No. He is sick. You don’t take him.”

  “Serafina,” Sutch said, “you hush up now. We all know you have nice tits and you give the boys all they want, but you get uppity and I’ll mark you, so help me God.”

  She became motionless, watching him like a wary animal, weighing the pros and cons of her actions, knowing that she was helpless.

  Alarm was rising in George. Serafina knew these men, she knew what he could expect from them. They were about to do something he wouldn’t like.

  He said to the girl: “You keep out of this. Bill wouldn’t harm me. It wouldn’t pay him.”

  “You’re harmed already,” she said.

  George laid his eyes on Win Gort.

  “Gort did that,” he said. “Gort isn’t too bright and he didn’t see the implications.”

  “What’s that?” said Gort suddenly becoming aware that he was being referred to. “By Christ …”

  Sutch waved a hand for him to be quiet.

  “What implications?” he asked gently.

  “I’m a Storm,” George said.

  Sutch drew his breath in.

  “You think I’m scared of the Storms?” he said.

  “You’re an intelligent man,” George told him. “Add it up. There’s a good few Storms. They have a lot of friends. There could be a small army comin’ in here lookin’ for me. This could end in a whole lot of unpleasantness that can be avoided.”

  “Now you see here …” Sutch started to say, but George overrode him.

  “Leave me finish,” he said. “You’re in this neck of the woods for peace an’ quiet. When you go out liftin’ cows and horses, holdin’ up banks, you’re out lookin’ for trouble. This ain’t the place for trouble. They find this place and you lose a mighty pleasant home. Think about it, Sutch. This is good country for your kind. Made for you.”

  Sutch grinned crookedly.

  “There’s a heap more of it around,” he said.

  “Sure,” George said, “if you live to see it.”

  “You just showed the bull the red rag,” Sutch said. “I don’t take kindly to being threatened.”

  “I ain’t threatening” George said. “I’m recitin’ the fact. Night follows day, don’t it? Some things just naturally follows others. You an’ me don’t have nothin’ to do with it.”

  Sutch looked at him meditatively for a full minute. Finally, he sighed gently and jerked his head to the powerful blacksmith.

  “Louie,” he said, “tote him over to your shop.”

  The blacksmith grunted and approached George.

  Alarm blossomed in George. He tried to scramble pointless out of the man’s reach. A powerful hand came out and caught him by the hair, imprisoning him. The massive arms came around him and lifted him off the ground. George felt helpless and, what was worse, ridiculous. Louie turned and lumbered toward the blacksmith’s shop. Sutch and Gort followed.

  There was a small Mexican boy in the shop. Louie placed George roughly on the hard earth floor and told the boy to build up some heat. The little fellow started the bellows, the fire began to roar. For one terrible moment, George thought they were going to torture him or brand him or something crazy like that. The heat and the fear brought the sweat out on him. He wanted to ask what they intended to do, but his pride prevented him. Sutch and Gort stood calmly watching the proceedings.

  Then George knew.

  The blacksmith sorted through some odds and ends and produced some chains. He could see the iron cuffs dangling. The clinking of the metal was like satanic music in his ears.

  He looked at Sutch and Gort. They were smiling.

  “You get the idea, son,” Sutch said. “You get any ideas about getting away into your head and you won’t get far. You’re going to be hobbled.”

  “My God,” George said, “no.”

  The thought of being chained drove horror through him like a white-hot iron.

  The next thirty minutes was both mental and physical torture. His f
lesh was seared agonizingly as the irons were put around his ankles. His spirit was somehow enchained at the same moment as his flesh. Some spark of fire died in him when Louie closed the last cuff. George lay sweating and exhausted on the dirt floor.

  Gort nearly died laughing. The irony of it struck him. His kind was the kind usually chained. Now here was a law-abiding respectable sonovabitch leg-ironed by the lawless. There was a niceness about it that appealed to him.

  “Great,” he exclaimed. “This is real great.”

  George fought to get a hold on himself.

  “Where does this get you?” he demanded. “This won’t stop the Storms comin’ in here.”

  “Won’t it now?” Sutch said. “Boy, one Storm puts his nose in my country an’ you’re dead.”

  George let that sink in. He was a hostage. He was helpless. They could now blow his brains out if the whim took them. If they had dropped him down a hundred foot hole he couldn’t have been more helpless.

  “You kill me,” he said, “an’ there ain’t nothin’ on God’s earth that can save you.”

  Gort said: “Bill, this boy’s kinda uppity. You know he makes me a mite mad. Maybe I should ought to rough him a little.”

  “No call for that,” Sutch said. “Not at this stage in the game. He’s a little confused is all, Win. He don’t know the score. Storm, you do some thinkin’.”

  “Don’t you see,” George said. “You kill me an’ you don’t stand a chance.”

  Sutch jerked his head toward the doorway.

  “Get back to the Indian,” he said.

  Slowly, George rose to his feet. The chain joining his ankles was short. Sutch said he would be hobbled and he was. He was as helpless as a grazing horse. He could just walk, but he’d never hit a speed that would get him a safe distance from here. With the iron chafing his scorched flesh and bringing a grin of agony to his face, he reached the doorway. He looked at the men. There was grim mockery in their eyes. For the first time in his life, he hated deeply and violently.

  “You shouldn’t of done this to me,” he said.

  The Indian girl was sitting outside her jacal. She didn’t stir when she saw him coming toward her, but sat there and watched him impassively. George lowered himself to the ground near her.